


Must(elid) Have You

by Inscapable



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Accidental Voyeurism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Animal Abuse (mention), Animal Mating (implied), Animal Transformation, Bad Puns, Body Dysmorphia (not Gender or ED related), Body Dysphoria (not Gender or ED related), Canon divergence- Goblet of Fire, Consensual Non-Monogamy (Implied), Disordered Eating (mention), Dramione endgame, Endgame Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Happy Ending, Herbology Professor Neville Longbottom, Hogwarts, Hurt/Comfort, I haven’t read the books in years, I’m sorry but I don’t know cannon, Malfoy is a Ferret, Multi, Neville is Queer, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Other, Pining, Polyamory (implied), Professor Hermione Granger, Professor Neville Longbottom, Screw the Epilogue, Screw the Expanded Universe, Trust Kink, Voyeurism, first fanfic, non human character, physical abuse (mention)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:35:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 40
Words: 33,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29489154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inscapable/pseuds/Inscapable
Summary: After a young Draco Malfoy is transfigured into a ferret and brutalised by a dark wizard, he disappears, presumed dead. Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic hastily brand the death a terrible aberration, and life, and the First Wizarding War, move on.Years after the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione Granger is employed as the Transfiguration Professor at Hogwarts. Processing the trauma of the war, struggling to piece together a meaningful life, and trying desperately not to make mistakes, she is horrified when Crookshanks injures a scarred and feral mustelid. As she nurses the wild animal back to health, she learns more about herself, and it, than she ever could have imagined.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger/Neville Longbottom
Comments: 183
Kudos: 146





	1. A Hairy Problem.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fan fiction. It’s a super silly story idea, and I’m sure it’s been done before, and better, by others (I didn’t really know how to check), so if you feel like I’m copying someone else’s idea, I apologise.
> 
> Full Disclosure Time! This is not meant to be dark, mature, or complex work (it’s supposed to be silly!) but I am writing to process the trauma of homelessness and C-PTSD. I don’t know how to tag that with appropriate trigger warnings (I will try!), and this isn’t a story “about” homelessness or PTSD, but I want to be totally clear that it may go randomly from fluffy stuff to fairly heavy themes without warning, because I am mentally ill, and my life is violent, and I do not always know what is “normal”. I really wouldn’t recommend this story to people who struggle with self-worth/low self esteem because I write Hermione’s inner voice as someone who is suffering from “gifted child” burnout, as well as someone who lost her parents/home/safety at a young age- the ways she thinks about herself aren’t always kind, and if you struggle with that too, this may not be a safe story for you to read. 
> 
> This work will have a happy ending, where everyone has a home, family, and people who love them. Unfortunately, that’s the bit that takes the most creative writing for me, so I don’t know how it’ll get there or what will happen in the mean time!

She was there because she worried about the birds.  
Habitat loss in the muggle world drove rare British birds to Hogwarts in droves; their songs filled the grounds and the forest during the day, and if they were bothered by all the owls, they certainly didn’t show it by being any less bold. She loved their twitchy movements and their strange, loud politics. They nested in the long grass and in hedges and knots in trees; they pinched bright thread from the banners around the quidditch pitch and straw from unattended brooms, and watching them was different from anything she’d ever been fond of before, because she had no burning desire to know everything about them. Though there weren’t muggle bird-watching guides in the library at Hogwarts, she could have found them somewhere; she could have written Harry asking for some next time he went in to the muggle world- it would have pleased him to have her asking him for books, a first fragile sign of a return to their old friendship. 

But although she could have learnt anything about them, she didn’t. Their names and habits were a pleasant secret; they had found a sanctuary in the ancient grounds just as she had, and they were busy with their secret bird business, happy and safe.

Or, mostly safe.

“Crookshanks!” She scolded, as he took off from her side in a flash of orange. During the day he followed her, from library to great hall, to classroom, and so on- he seemed to enjoy being the cat of a professor, and it suited him- but it seemed cruel to keep him in the castle constantly. Her rooms, a tiny teachers’ apartment by the Library, didn’t even have a window, although the transfiguration classroom she taught in did. She could have let him out unattended; no one would have thought anything of it, honestly, but Crookshanks was an excellent hunter, and even if the bustle and song of the busy birds hadn’t been such a source of pleasure to her, the reality of her life now was that the bright, broken bodies with their wide, empty eyes, that Crookshanks would line up happily at her feet, reminded her of other broken bodies and empty eyes, and she ended up being sick.

She grabbed for the cat now, tucking her mittened hands under his squat, heavy body and heaving him out of the hedge he was busily burrowing into. He’d never been a small cat that she’d known; now she found him unexpectedly resistant, really desperate to cling to the lower branches, and making an indescribably monstrous noise, too.  
“Oh!” She gasped, overbalancing as he finally sprung free, and promptly falling on her butt in the snow. Crookshanks was howling and wriggling in her grasp- but there was another body attached to the cat! Fur and claws flew, and she gave a startled, helpless little scream as a heated battle between the muscular orange cat and a sinuous, furry, snake-like beast continued to take place in her arms. She fought her first impulse to drop (or throw) Crookshanks; but it took two hands to hold him like she was, and her wand was in the pocket of her coat, well out of reach. Now a branch sprang out of the hedge suddenly and lashed her smartly across the shin- one of the combatants must have been tangled in it- and she gave up, trying to herd the battle out of her lap and on to the snow so that she could grab her wand. Crookshanks spat in fury, and the furry snake leapt straight in to the air, landing painfully in Hermione’s hair and twisting itself hopelessly in to a knot.  
Crookshanks whirled on her to pursue it, and jumped on to her head, but Hermione had had enough- she managed to poke her wand between herself and her cat and sprayed him with jet of warm water, making him change direction mid-leap and, landing on the ground with every hair on his body standing on end, he shot away towards the castle, wailing the entire way.

In her hair, the wild animal continued to scramble and twist. The tugging was painful, but she was wearing a tight scarf against the cold, so the length of her bushy hair played out, away from her skin, over the fabric instead. Her scalp prickled in anticipation, though; she had no desire to have the poor creature bite her head or neck under her hair. Prodding her wand blindly back over her shoulder, into the squirming animal, she cast the gentlest stunning spell that she could, hoping she’d get it the first time.  
The creature went limp.  
“Bollocks” she whispered to herself, biting off her mittens and tentatively reaching back. The animal was so caught up in her hair that she could barely discern anything about it; she felt a few tufts of silken fur, and poked a sharp, wet little mouth, and then hastily withdrew her fingers. It was obvious she couldn’t get it out now; it was thoroughly tangled. She’d need to go back to the castle, maybe to the Hospital wing...

It was hard to imagine this happening to any of the professors she’d had when she’d been a student. She didn’t really think of herself as a person of enormous dignity or presence- she’d been reluctant to become a professor at all, but Minerva had been very insistent- but now, as she struggled to her feet, she was very aware that she was soaked to the waist from falling in the snow, and the frumpy old muggle coat that she had thrown on over her robes had a fair bit of stuffing poking out. She’d knitted her mittens herself, and, well, normally it didn’t bother her that they were a bit lumpy and misshapen, but, stuffing them back on her numb hands, it was obvious that they failed to impart an impression of composure or academic excellence. 

And her hair, with a wild animal in it, was literally a nest.

She suddenly didn’t particularly want to walk through the entrance hall bedraggled, with a squirrel caught in her hair, didn’t, in fact, particularly want anyone, even fellow staff members, to see her like this, and, though it briefly occurred to her to go down to the greenhouse to beg Professor Longbottom for help, this whole incident seemed overwhelmingly like the sort of thing that he’d outgrown about ten years ago and, you know what, something that the brightest witch of her age could probably figure out on her own.

She flipped the hood of her coat up over her hair and the animal, dried the hem of her robes with a muttered charm, and hastened up to the castle, eager to get to her room before the stunner began to wear off.

The Headmistress stood in the entrance hall, talking quietly to the Defence against the Dark Arts teacher, a handsome muggle-born wizard who’d been a few years ahead of Hermione at hogwarts and who tended to smile at her a lot. Crookshanks was winding around their ankles, looking for sympathy, and they both looked a bit startled when Hermione burst in.  
“Lovely evening!” She said brightly, “Oh, come on Crooks-” she almost stooped to pick him up, then realised that could knock her hood off, and changed the movement into a sort of curtsy instead, completely mystifying the watching professors, “-well, off we go, Good Night! See you at Breakfast”.  
Crookshanks darted after her, his head tipped back so that he could emit ungodly wails towards the echoing ceiling as he walked, attracting the attention of curious students and staff members, who were wandering around in the corridors, having just finished dinner.  
She decided to follow his example, keeping her chin determinedly up as she strode towards her room. She did not wail, because although it might have made her feel better, she thought it would look extremely stupid.


	2. No Stoat About It

_Three things he remembered._

_The first was his mother. Before-before the nights of rabbits-eggs-worms, there was the smooth-faced-walker with the graceful movements that no female in her winding mating dance had ever been able to do better. A bright-smelling-feeder-of-many-treats, an animal as soft as a burrow lined with ground kicker fur, as strong as the roots of the big stone dray in which the walkers make their noise-smells-burrows. Her nose was so sensitive that she could smell his fear-threat-confusion or his mischief-nipping-playing even when she was far away; and sneak to him, into his burrow or his territory and feed him the lemony-crinkly-chewy treats or, prancing-bruxing-playing, catch his eye with hers and make the noise that he thought might be his favourite in the world; “Alright, but don’t tell your father”_

_Where was his mother? He was sketchy about that; further than further-further, further than a flier would carry an unsuspecting ground dancer, past many ground dancers in their territories and many walkers and their dwellings, so many lengths of his body to the ground that it was taller by many times than the big stone dray. Although he still saw his mother when he was curled up in his dreaming place, and although his whiskers reached for her softness even while he slept, he would not know his walker mother again. This was the way of the wind, which was the natural course of a life which could not be seen or controlled, but could change at any time; the way of the wind was the way of all the ground animals that lived between the deep and the vast._

_The second thing he remembered was pain. Other ground dancers knew the pain of a bite or scratch, or maybe the snap of a living bone, but he knew the snap of many living bones, the being clawed-squeezed-lifted by an invisible flier and thrown- a CRUNCH that shocked to the tips of his whiskers- and dropped!- a sound-sense somehow worse than the crunch because it was indescribably wetter. Again this had happened, and again, until all the winds of his life were pain and pain again, and then the wind had changed suddenly, but he’d never forgotten the pain. Amongst the ground dancers, this made him a source of confusion-fear-awe, because he knew the worst pain and no bite-scratch of mating spar or organ-puncturing claw of flier was worse. For other ground dancers pain shouted a warning to them that they may end up curled cold in their burrows, their living quick mangled so badly that they’d rot into the walls, but for him pain meant triumph, because he was far better at being hurt, and far better at hurting, than any other ground dancer._

_Where was pain? It was his constant companion, more constant than the tiny, plump ground digger who had designed a clever burrow that looped through the roots of the big stone dray above his own burrow, whose tunnels were so small and so styled amongst the stone that he could not route them out, and merely had to endure the hungry-fearsome-indignity of hearing the plump-squirming food animal live with gusto less than a body-length away. He felt pain in the wind, pain in the delicate flakes of the water-leaves that fell from the vast, pain when his burrow wasn’t thickly lined with the fur he pulled from ground kickers, fliers, and his own lithe body. Pain was in him when no other feelings, no mating-bruxing-biting, no root-chewing-mischief, no whisker-sweeping-terror engaged him. He knew pain in his bowed legs and his kinked tail and his hitching, lumpy rib cage, and it made him strong._

_The last thing he remembered was how to count to three._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really want people to feel safe engaging with this story, so if you have any suggestions about tags or warnings that should apply, I’d really appreciate a heads-up!


	3. All I’m Sinking About

Crookshanks pawed at the outside of the bathroom door, eager to get in and see what she was doing. She locked the door with her wand, because Crookshanks was getting good at managing the handle. It was already snuggly warm and steamy in the bathroom; the castle’s elves knew her habits, and liked to draw her a hot bath in the evenings. It seemed impossible to convince them to stop, and recently they’d started leaving interesting new books within reach of the tub, too.

Hermione stripped down to her damp knickers, and used her scarf as a sort of turban, to scoop the animal up and relieve the tension on her scalp. Twisting and turning was of no avail; she couldn’t actually see the stunned creature- it was buried too deeply in her hair.

A half dozen floating charmed mirrors later, she could make out a little white fur, and a furry, hand-like paw, but not much else. Charming mirrors was actually quite tricky- they tended to bounce the charms around wildly- and now she felt silly for going to such lengths. She’d have to do this blind.

Her scalp was really aching now, and she was starting to get a headache. She knew from experience that even if she hadn’t been rubbish at them, detangling spells weren’t much use on her hair, and obviously she wasn’t going to cut it- no telling whether she’d be able to regrow it properly if she did. She’d always sniffed at those kinds of beauty spells, and all the more so after all of Molly’s mean-spirited nagging about them after the war, trying to turn Hermione into someone good enough to marry her son. Now she wished she had listened; if good grooming could confer a little dignity when one had a badger on their head, it couldn’t be all bad.

She spent a minute procrastinating, knowing the work ahead would be an absolute pain on her own, and then started locating and teasing apart the knots that ensnared the beast. As long as the stunner didn’t wear off, she’d manage sooner or later, and no one had to know about any of this.

Partway through her work, she touched something wet, and quickly snatched her fingers back, examining them. Her fingertips were smeared with blood, and she shuddered unhappily, suddenly afraid that the animal wasn’t stunned, but dead, or dying, and here she was worrying about her hair! She bit her lip and closed her eyes, trying to tamp down the panic that wanted to overtake her rational thought. She fumbled backwards, resolving to get a good hold on the creature and cut her hair off, when some movement of her head or shaking hand dislodged the final snare; the animal fell limp against her palm, and she awkwardly scooped it over her shoulder and against her chest, peering down at it.

Her first surprise was how big it was. Almost the size of a cat, really, although very differently shaped. The lean, sinuous body and silvery fur reminded her immediately of her otter patronus; but of course, they were in the same family. She held some sort of mustelid, pure white in its winter moult. The length of its’ body and its’ ethereal colour belayed its’ muscularity; it was actually quite heavy, and very solid. The sturdy legs stuck out in slightly odd directions; she thought maybe they were broken, but, touching and then rotating them gently, decided that maybe they’d been broken before, years since, and set crooked. The silken fur was very smooth, save for where it was marred by scars; it was a warrior of an animal, she thought, vaguely remembering a series of muggle children’s books, read long ago, about the warlike nature of stoats and polecats and pine martens.

She lay it gently down on a towel, trying to find the blood- and, there, a wound behind the creature’s right front leg, distinctive of a cat bite that was intended to pierce the ribs and heart for a quick kill. Luckily, the stoat’s ribs had served their purpose; it looked like Crookshank’s tooth had skated across the bone and punctured only flesh. The animal’s chest still moved strongly, and there was already very little blood.

Still, she frowned unhappily. Cat bites were almost certain to become infected, and the silken little shoulder didn’t rotate properly when she tested it; she thought it was dislocated.

She was tired; puzzled by Crookshanks’ sudden urge to take on a stoat, drained from trying to wrestle the animal out of her hair, and still slightly embarrassed by the whole situation. She would take the stoat to Hagrid in the morning, of course, she could just leave out the entire hair situation, but would he mend it? If she asked him to, certainly, but she knew that he trapped and killed stoats to feed to Hogwarts’ larger resident magical creatures (and to eat himself), and he considered them a bit of a nuisance because they hunted some of the smaller magical creatures around the castle. She felt inexplicably like it would be wrong if the stoat died; it had been doing nothing but minding its own business when Crookshanks crossed it.

She cleaned the wound with a spell, then carefully droppered a little of a simple healing potion in to it; there were potions more specifically for animals, but brewing them would be an involved, lengthy process- she was too tired right now. Relocating the animal’s shoulder wasn’t terribly difficult- Ginny had once taught her a little charm that quidditch players used to relocate their fingers (a common injury), and it was only really a minor modification to suit the movement of the joint.

She conjured a little bandage to pad the laceration, and then making a small splint to keep the shoulder lightly immobilised. She thought it all looked like an impressive job when it was done; she’d have to take the cast off to check the wound later, or Hagrid would, anyway, but for now it was very tidy.

She smothered a huge yawn, transfiguring the laundry basket into a large brass birdcage and carefully transferring the stunned stoat into it on the towel.

She turned the soap into a water bowl, and hung it carefully from a horizontal bar, filling it from the tap because she was too tired to use her wand again. Last of all, she dimmed the magical light and removed the stunning spell, not wanting to leave the animal stressed and helpless until it wore off.

Immediately the little creature twisted onto its feet, backing to the far edge of the circular cage.

“You poor little thing” Hermione hummed softly “I know I scared you, but I’m just trying to help. I’m just going to have a bath and then go to bed, but you’ll be completely alright in here, I promise”

The animal stared at her with bright, pale eyes. It didn’t look afraid; actually, it didn’t really look hurt, glaring at her with the type of intensity and bandy-legged fury that she usually associated with when Crookshanks wanted to eat off her fork. It seemed to like what it saw- it didn’t even wait for her to step into the bath before it was over at the edge of the cage closest to her, peering myopically out from under the water bowl and making an enormous production of curling up on the towel.

She set her wand to chime, in case she fell asleep, and rested her cheek on the edge of the bath, watching with heavy eyes as the little creature curved a fine halo of eager whiskers towards the bathtub, and her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Being able to immerse myself (and find a lot of joy) in writing these silly little chapters was really difficult (the first two thousand words took me almost a month to write) until you guys started reading, commenting, (and reblogging!) this story. Now I’m so super excited to share with you that I’m typing away until my devices run out of charge! Your enthusiasm is so infectious :) Thank you to everyone who stops by, really!


	4. Much Ado Astoat Nothing

_He’d eaten two eggs and he was eating a third when he heard the walker-noise coming from the vast, close by. There were more eggs in the nest- at least three more- and he didn’t want to turn his whiskers to anything else. The fliers were doing their flapping-jumping-screaming less than a body length away, so there was a lot of noise closer and louder than the walker._

_Then the bright one bit him behind his leg, and the fliers stopped their flapping-jumping-screaming and fled. The jolt of razor fang across his ribs was agony; he whirled on the bright one and bit it on the ear, chewing on the scarred flesh. He recognised this bright one; a scarred and squat-legged killer, a fear-awe-fury animal that heeded no drag or spray and made a colony of the walkers who lived in the stone dray. It made terrible noises that he could feel in the pads of his paws and the flinching flesh at the base of the many sense-hairs that ticked his body._

_They were wrenched from the protective tangle of the dense deep-drinker and spun up, up into the vast, no claw or pad on the ground! He locked his jaw, held the bright one like a half-bled ground kicker, but the bright one pummelled him, heavy, bone-jarring swats with huge paws full of hooked claws-_

_He fought-_

_He flew-_

_He landed in a loud-lemony-smelling tangle of long, sleek fur, twisted his body and kicked his paws wildly to feel, to flee, and became utterly ensnared. Then the wind changed; what changed with the wind was that he could not bite-scratch-flee any more._

_To be so still was to be cold, quicked, all vital elements bleeding out of him into the burrow (only it was bleeding into the walker’s pelt now). It was clawed-squeezed-lifted, it was whiskers slick-dull-sticky causing phantom smell-sight-noise-sense that was louder than angry wind, louder than a burrow fall, louder than the baying of the big bright one who lived in the shadow of the deep-drinkers and howled whenever his giant hairy walker pack mate went to the big stone dray._

_Through the rolling chaos of smell-sight-noise-sense there was the telling-feeling-sound of the bright one who’d bitten him, yowling over and over in the twisted, mangling way that bright ones had of mixing ground-beast-noise with walker-noise._

_“I am a bright one! I am a bright one! I am a bright one!”, and when the sound was stolen as if by burrow bolt, it felt like dragging on a smooth root._

_Gentle paws touching him; the bright-smelling fur fell away from his flinching skin, and he was pulled against the walker’s warm, heart-beating flesh, silken and warm under his arched whiskers. It was a female, with a pelt the colour of burrow earth, and her smooth face loomed over him with gentling-bruxing-grooming sense-noise. She had no whiskers and he was confused-revolted-infuriated by that, like he’d found another male’s spray in his burrow. She was more blind than a squirming kit._

_Still, her sense-noises were gentle, and he couldn’t move to bite her anyway. She quieted his wounds with her hand-licking until he felt as gentling-bruxing-grooming as her sense-noise was, and when his hunting-thought came back to him it was because he could move again. The smooth-faced-small-bodied-burrow-pelted female had moved away from him, making nonsense-noise. She had very few scars, this female; and no glorious mantle of mating scars or even thickening of the shoulders, so she was a very young kit by the way of ground dancers; the bright one must have adopted her as colony, because female kits had no burrows of their own until they were whelping._

_No wild-born ground dancer knew how the bright ones tamed the walkers or spoke their nonsense-noise. But as he arched his whiskers towards the noise-sense of the burrow-pelted female with her gentling-licking-hands and her bright-lemony-pelt-that-held-the-angry-wind, he had a realising, long unconsidered in favour of egg-worm-mouse-pup-treat sign and the way of the wind that was the way of the ground dancer;_

_He was not wild-born._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, if you think there’s anything I should tag, I’d really appreciate your suggestions. I’m pretty new to posting on AO3 and I’m not very knowledgeable about how to apply the most and best possible warnings so that people can feel safe engaging with my work :)


	5. Big Questions

It was never exactly a terrific idea to eat the fruit-filled sponge cake that Hagrid brewed bysome esoteric process in the blackened stove that belched in the corner of his cabin. Pave with it, maybe. Stop a leak in a boat? You could probably use it to fish for giant squid, as long as you didn’t mind that they were already dead when you hauled them to shore. But for the sake of the stoat in her bathroom, Hermione sucked the rubbery cement off her teeth, trying to swallow enough that she could actually talk.

“Wot d’ya think now?” Hagrid beamed, clattering the kettle back down on the stove “I made it jus’ for you, knew you like the strawberries especially, ‘ermione”

“Oh-“ she slurped rather loudly and smiled as brightly as she could “Oh, it’s lovely, Hagrid! I wish I hadn’t just had tea. Would it be alright if I took the rest of my slice back to the castle with me?”

Hagrid smiled into his beard, trying to hide his blush “I’ll jus’ wrap up the ‘ole thing for you, love”

“That would be so lovely” Hermione chirped gamely “I can eat it while I’m marking class work this weekend. But actually, I was wondering if I could ask you some questions, because, well, you know more about the grounds than anyone, of course”

“Not findin’ trouble, I ‘ope” Hagrid settled with a creak on the enormous bed and threaded his fingers through the salt-and-pepper streaks that coloured his thick beard.

“I’ve had enough trouble for a life time” Hermione said, feeling a brief flash of anxiety “Honestly, I’m not much of a Gryffindor these days”

Hagrid tutted that away with a wave of his hand “Yer prolly sick o’ hearin’ about what sort of great witch you are, ‘ermione- you don’ ‘ave to be minister of magic jus’ to do good things in the world”

“I’ve caught- well, Crookshanks caught a stoat on the grounds” She said quickly, afraid she’d cry if they went any further down the path of what she could and should have done with her life after the war.

“Good on ‘im” Hagrid grunted “Nuisance things. I wonder if it’s the same one wot got inter me hutch the othe’ day an’ killed me favourite doe”

“I’m sure it isn’t” Hermione lied weakly “I think it’s only young. I want to help it recover, though”

She thought Hagrid would dismiss this as silly, and maybe that was his first impulse, because he started to speak and then stopped, and furrowed his brow in thought.

Then he smiled at her.

“Good fer you, ‘Ermione” he said “Stoats jus’ mind their business, like everythin’ else. I din’ mean anythin’ by it. ‘Ow’s it ‘urt?”

“Crookshanks bit it” Hermione said with relief “Behind the shoulder. It’s just a small wound, like a pinkie nail-“

Hagrid held up a huge hand, with the pinkie extended delicately, and Hermione looked blankly at it, then laughed, and held up her own small pinkie next to his. Hagrid took her hand and patted it lightly.

“Not much wot kills a stoat” he said seriously “I’ll give you sommit to give it a bit of a wash, but don’ you get bit- not much wot int nasty in a stoat face”

He patted her hand once more, and then hauled himself up and started banging through his cupboards, humming and mumbling to himself.

“Nice pelt on ‘em this time o’ year” he said over his shoulder.

“It’s pure white” Hermione agreed “Only, it has very light eyes, too” she frowned, thinking of the stoat watching her as she brushed her teeth that morning. It hadn’t chewed the splint or bandage at all, although it had styled the towel in to quite a thick bed, which it dragged around to sit on as it followed her along the circumference of the cage.

“Do you think it’s blind?” She asked hesitantly.

“Meybe” Hagrid hummed “meybe it’s a pole cat. ‘ard to know better in winter”

“What’s the difference?” Hermione asked hesitantly.

“Not much” Hagrid said dismissively “Call’t a ermine- ‘Ermione’s ermine!”

She snorted, then laughed out loud because he looked so proud.

He showed her the chipped, grimy bottle of a pale gold potion (it looked like Fang might have chewed it a little at some point) and then tucked it into her satchel, smiling at the books that poked out when he did. They chatted for another half hour about her students and the difficulty of how to mark them when they transfigured their badgers to iPods instead of record players. It was almost her favourite way to spend friday evenings- edged out only slightly by reading in bed. It was late by the time she was on her way back to the castle, happily weighed down by the books, potion, and the cake in her satchel.

A light still burnt down at the greenhouses, bright and warm. She hesitated for a moment. When she’d first started her professorship Hogwarts, she’d spent a lot of time with Neville. He’d become a Professor within a few years of the final battle at Hogwarts- he’d helped with rebuilding the castle and started teaching almost straight away, and since Professor Sprout retired he’d made the place his thoroughly his own. She liked his steamy little apartment, with its tapestries and potted plants and brass lanterns that spangled the walls with stars. She’d even fallen asleep on his lumpy bed once after drinking too much (and crying about Ron), waking in the morning to find Neville stretched over his horsehair couch, with one of his vines happily curling around his hairy toes. She never could have settled into living at Hogwarts again if it wasn’t for Neville’s irreverent, funny advice.

But no one liked a worrier; all the things she would talk with Neville about (Harry, Ron, whether she was a good enough teacher, whether she was too annoying to be in a relationship, her parents- or, rather- the Wilkens) were the most precious things in the world to her. She thought about them constantly- too often, definitely. If she couldn’t hide her feelings, people were horrified, and she wasn’t sure she could bear up to more forced lightheartedness tonight.

She continued to the castle, leaving the appealing warmth behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, goodness, forgive the terrible writing of Hagrid’s “accent” here. The closest I’ve come to a “West Country” accent is on Come Dine With Me, so I’d be better off if he was saying scathing things about someone’s cutlery. Enjoy the small dump of chapters to come- it might be the last for a bit, while I sort out a few details of my irl circumstances. If I haven’t replied to your comment, please know that it’s just because I’m hopeless, not because I don’t love each and every one of them :)
> 
> Drink lots of water, everyone! Extreme weather is very dehydrating <3


	6. Ermi(o)ne

_The great killer bright one peered at him with evil eyes; it paced closer with whiskers low and hunting-biting-hurting sense palpably shivering from it._

_He ate another mouthful of the bright one’s food, and very deliberately turned his back on it._

_Shrieking in fury, the bright one battered against the hard-coppery-bright roots that formed a burrow around him. He was bruxing-mischief-prancing and the food that the walker had tipped in to his burrow was even better for the fact that it was supposed to feed the bright one._

_He could not see-sense far outside the root-burrow, but his nose-noise-whisker-sense was good; there was a larger stone dray, filled with more nesting material than he’d ever seen. His home burrow was much warmer than the root-burrow in the stone dray, because it had been crafted by a female ground-kicker for her ground-kicker kits, but the long-quicked ground-kicker had not used anywhere near as much nesting material as this bright one and it’s walker female. The stone dray would be a perfect place to whelp many, many kits._

_The walker’s favourite dreaming place was within sight-sense, piled with nesting materials and smelling so warmly and sweetly of walker-scent that he found himself sitting in bruxing-gentling-grooming thought at the edge of the root-burrow closest to it, arching his whiskers towards it like a playing-mischief-biting pup._

_That was, when he wasn’t playing with the bright one._

_“My food! My food!” The bright one yelled threateningly. It knew very little ground noise, mostly chirping to him in flier-noise or walker-noise, or a garbled mix of noise that made no sense at all. Of course, it couldn’t fit so much as a winter-plump foot between the roots of the burrow, and when it was angry-lazy-tired enough to lie on the top of the burrow, he bit it and tore out a mouthful of fur._

_The walker was not in the stone dray. He supposed she was hunting to bring him more of the delicious bright one food, which was as good as worms-eggs-organs and would have him so winter plump the wind might find him dreaming until all the deep-drinkers sprouted; such good food would carry him through until the females were weaving and musky and ready to mate, long after the hole in his flesh was mended. He had many females- three- and though they brought him food when he dragged the territory, bit other males, or when they were ready to mate, they had never brought him such sweet-succulent-richness._

_It brought him so much fullness in his belly and comfort in the closeness of the walker nest that his hunting thought was very slow, but he knew something; although she had a strange mischief-root-chewing way of dancing it, although it was too cold in the ground for females to get their musky-mating-madness, although she was a kit with no necklace of scars, it seemed obvious-_

_The walker female wanted to mate with him._


	7. An Ermine In The Hand

It was Saturday. While everyone else was enjoying their freedom, Hermione was grading essays. She could see, in this, how professorship suited her; you never had to stop working if you didn’t want to, and no one really bothered you.

Well, _almost_ no one.

The ermine spent so much time chirping and trilling at her, it was like having a canary. She’d figured out it was a male (his proportionately large, furry testicles were covered in the only coloured fur on his body besides the gold ticking at the tip of his tail, which she secretly found entertaining in a way she couldn’t quite articulate, but that she wished she could joke with Neville about), and the elaborate interactive displays that he performed for her while she sat nearby were hilarious. Half the time, he seemed barely hindered by the splint, as if he hardly noticed it- and he would cavort in parade around the birdcage and then look meaningfully at her and warble. The rest of the time, he would suddenly act as if he was overcome by his injury and lay close to death; squirming in the towel with his injured shoulder in the air, making soft pain alarms and thrashing his head violently, only occasionally breaking character with heavy, undignified snorts and expectant glances in her direction. It was very successful; she could ignore him when he was prancing around nimbly without a care in the world, but his “dying moans” were far too funny to tune out, and she kept finding herself glancing up from the essays, catching his sly, pale gaze, and snorting with laughter at whatever chaotic arrangement he’d made of the towel in his efforts to die loudly.

“You are the most dramatic animal I’ve ever met” she scolded him, petting Crookshanks (curled up in a frosty “I am ignoring you” sulk at her side) so that he didn’t get jealous.

The ermine let out a lusty snort of agony and kicked the towel up into the air with his back legs, blinking at her. She glanced at the huge pile of essays, back at the ermine, and then said “I should give your wound another wash, I suppose”

The ermine leapt nimbly to his feet as she approached the cage, and watched her confidently. Although he seemed to enjoy her attention- she was starting to suspect that he had been nursed through an injury before, in fact- he hadn’t liked the wound being washed yesterday, biting her dragon-hide gloves like he could murder them if he was only determined enough, and squirming and fighting the entire time. He came eagerly to the bars closest to her as she picked up the cage and carried it to the bathroom, shutting the door against Crookshanks, who deliberately ignored this provocation.

“Did you get caught in a trap when you were a baby, maybe?” She hummed, setting the cage down. He chittered back conversationally, then saw her pick up the gloves and arched his back, reversing hastily to the back of the cage with his eye slitted closed and his round ears close to his skull. It was such a change in his demeanour that she hesitated, and then put the gloves down, and, keeping her wand at the ready, reached carefully into the cage with her bare hand, biting her lip determinedly.

He didn’t move as she hesitantly touched his arched back, ready to snatch her hand back in a moment, but she could feel his little body thrumming with tension, and his eyes were almost completely closed. She started to wrap her hand gently around his bandaged rib cage, and that’s when he struck, sinking his sharp little teeth into the mound of her thumb.

Yelping, she snatched her hand back, yanking him halfway across the cage because he refused to release her. Without another thought, she stunned him, and he crumpled limply onto the brass floor.

“Stupid stupid stupid!” She scolded herself aloud, squeezing her thumb tightly to stop the bleeding. It was only that he sometimes acted so tamely, only that his blue eyes were so intelligent, so weirdly human.

“Rorw?” Crookshanks worried right on the other side of the door. She hastily dashed the tears from her eyes. It wasn’t that the wound was awful, or even that it hurt that much, more that she couldn’t believe she’d made the mistake of anthropomorphising a weasel.

“I’m alright, Crookie” She called weakly “Just... stubbed my toe”

“Morw” Crookshanks replied seriously, and she sobbed, and then laughed a little. She never lacked _someone_ to talk to, at least.

“I’ll be out in a minute” She said a bit more quietly, almost to herself, taking stock. She hadn’t meant to stun the ermine so hard, and she hoped he wasn’t frightened. She washed her hands thoroughly, soaping the bite on her thumb well. His little teeth were like needles, and he’d chomped down hard enough to bruise where he didn’t puncture. It would probably hurt more later. For now, she rubbed healing potion- the same one she’d used on the ermine’s shoulder on the first night she treated it- into the wound and put a couple of muggle sticking plasters on it. The wizard world had a tendency to “reinvent the wheel” when it came to technology that muggles took for granted, and she’d decided that they usually got it wrong; the big, bright blue bandaids that she bought in bulk were designed for when chefs, kitchen hands, or waiters cut themselves, because the blue would be easy to spot in a plate of food and easy to remedy; it worked exactly the same way with potions and saved rather a lot of trouble over the usually quite violently oozing khaki dressings that were used in the wider wizarding world.

Tending her own injury refocused her; it was a quick and easy matter to wash and re-dress the ermine’s wound, since he was stunned, and she decided regretfully that she’d probably have to do it like this every time; it was a lot easier than fighting him. She cleaned the cage while he lay next to the sink, and, since the towel she’d given him had quite a stink after two nights of use, she got him a fresh one. She’d have liked to line the cage with shredded newspaper too, but who knew what the magical ink in the daily prophet would do to a non-magical creature? The next thing she knew, he’d be turning yellow and singing opera.

She still felt bad for stunning him. She picked him up gently and nursed him for a moment, admiring the silken fur and little, articulate feet. She was glad she’d decided to tend to him herself; she felt like she owed him, and he was certainly interesting.

“If we’re going to keep doing this, you need a name” she murmured, taking the opportunity to lightly caress the length of the limp, wiry dark gold whiskers that lined his lips and chin. A name had already come to mind for the self-important and bold little animal. Judging by his fearlessness and his scars, he was a king of Hogwarts; so she’d call him Salazar. For obvious reasons, people always thought of snakes when they thought of the rather storied Hogwarts founder, but, for some reason she had associated the house with mustelid for years. Hopefully he’d do a little better with the name than the founder, who was not exactly a popular figure these days.

“Salazar” she whispered, and impulsively dropped a tiny kiss onto the ermine’s soft head.


	8. Halcyon Drays

_He’d never known such bruxing-pleasure as this. He dreamt-ate-pranced. There was no dark full of predatory fliers and no bright of walker-noise and burrow-stillness. There were no cold-water-leaves from the vast, and no aching in his living bones from hard burrow and sparse nesting material. The female walker, who he thought of as burrow-pelt (although with a great deal more affection than the slightly rude name implied) was very prancing-playing-bruxing to watch as she cavorted around her burrow, burying herself coyly in nesting material and looking at him slyly, then pushing the nesting material into piles as if daring him to play with her. She had a tuft of flier fur that she played with, flicking it back and forth like a surrogate tail, and occasionally nibbling it with her delicate, whisker-less mouth._

_She made noise at him almost senselessly, but he’d found that she knew a few ground animal noises; a chaotic, trilling-huffing that shivered his whiskers with pleasure-bruxing-playing-sense, and a yelp of pain-alarm when he bit her that was entirely comprehensible._

_She’d decided on a sense-noise for him; if he turned his sight-sense to her when she made it, she would brux. Not so much when he only turned his whisker-noise or noise-sense towards her; definitely not when he kept the sense-hairs on his back to her, although it felt very good on his flesh, so sometimes he let her make it a few times before he tried to sight-sense her. She often played just out of proper sight-sense, more then three body lengths away from him; that was where she played with the bright one, or produced food for it. The place where she bit him was also out of proper sight-sense, so he gave it very little hunting-thought._

_He didn’t know why she bit at him with her strange, quicked, toothless hand- he liked her gentling-grooming hands, which ran with proper blood and sensed of warmth-holding, less thickened than a flier’s talons, less sensitive than his own fleshy hands, but still much more vital than the quicked-toothless ones. She didn’t know his sense-noise and it caused him fright-startled-biting; he’d never known such a stupid kitten. Still, she’d shown no indication that she wanted to eat him; she was just bad at playing-grooming-bruxing. A kit would change as the wind taught it._

_She produced for him so much food he couldn’t consume all of it! And when he dragged on the nesting material, she stole it away and produced more, smelling lemony-bright like her fur! Of course, he had to mark it properly again, but it was perfectly bristly and satisfying on his glands; even worm-egg-mice-pup treats weren’t as good as dragging really thoroughly, and this nesting material was just right for it._

_The wind was good; he’d grow winter-plump and shiny as a bright one, dreaming as he liked and dancing for his burrow-pelt female until they could chase off her old, killer bright one together._


	9. Growing On Me

She jumped up when she heard the cheery knock on the door of her apartment, and it was all she could do not to clutch her wand; people never really came to her apartment on the weekends, and old instincts told her there must be trouble.

Instead, there was Neville.

Just as she had, Neville had lost a catastrophic amount of weight in the lead-up to the final defeat of Voldemort. Actually, they’d been through a long course of treatment together at Saint Mungo‘s; they both had metabolisms that tended towards plump, and years of gradually worsening deprivation and stress during a time of crucial physical growth had a lasting impact; for Hermione, it was mostly in her height- below average for a woman and smaller than both her parents- and a bone density problem for which she had to take a potion every year. For Neville, everything that had been soft and curved in his youth had turned leggy and awkward, like an overgrown topiary. His cheeks had hollowed and all the girlish softness his features once held was hollow and gaunt to the point that he looked at least five years older than he was. He was undeniably beautiful, though, in a lived-in, bohemian way, all magnetic, beaming smiles and silly expressions exaggerated by the extremity of his features.

“Are you doing anything? I have an extremely time sensitive question, Professor Granger.” He was leaning so steeply across her doorway that she automatically cocked her head to mirror him. He didn’t wait for her to answer- or he took her helpless little smile as an answer- because he pulled a bottle of muggle wine out from behind his back and brandished it proudly.

“Will you help me drink this Australian wine that the Wilkens keep sending me, please?”

Hermione laughed in surprise, covering her mouth.

“Oh, Neville, I don’t- I mean, I’m grading essays...” she hedged uncertainly.

“Great, I’ll help!” Neville said, straightening up and waiting just a moment for her to invite him (which she did with a wave) before he stepped into her room.

“Actually, the wine will probably be more help than me, you know I’m rubbish at transfiguration” He chattered merrily as he looked around curiously, summoning a couple of glasses from her kitchenette. “Just so you know, you haven’t spoken to me in a month, and someone said you’ve got another cat, so I’m not just here because the wine was getting in my way, if you know what I mean. I’m very much here to support your decision to become a crazy cat witch”

“I haven’t spoken to you in a month?” Hermione gaped, flushing with guilt “I- just- I mean, I didn’t... I swear that the time got completely away from me. I meant to talk to you!”

“It’s okay” Neville said easily, “I’m sure I’d be checking on you if you _weren’t_ working too hard as well” he flashed her a smile “You do everything in extremes”

“I...” she took the glass of wine he held out to her. It was the colour of butter, smelling sweetly of fruit and lemons. If it was late enough for unplanned wine visits, it was late enough for dinner, and she’d forgotten “I don’t really think of myself that way”

“Oh, well. I can’t be right all the time” Neville said comfortably, and then the inner breast pocket of his robe started jumping about, and Hermione stared.

“Is that... Trevor?” She asked incredulously.

“Nope, Trevor was pretty old- for a toad, I mean. He died last year- but don’t be all upset that you didn’t know. I always thought it was a bit strange that he never turned out to be a dark wizard in disguise or a philosophers stone or half-kneazle, or something. Very disappointing” He was rummaging around in his pocket, and now, triumphantly presented to her-

“It’s an iPhone” he said helpfully. The lock screen was bright with a picture of a planter shaped like a llama, with a mandrake in a tiny cowboy hat sticking out of it.

“Does it... I mean, does it even work at Hogwarts?” Hermione asked dubiously.

“Yeah! Well, no. That is to say that I mostly use it to play bejewelled” Neville admitted “Plus I have this app that turns it into a... walkie-talkie? That works fine”

“That’s... weird” Hermione snuggled down on the couch again, shifting away the pile of parchment she was marking so that Neville could sit down next to her. The couch was small, more of a love seat, really, and when Neville sat down he had to put an arm over the back of the couch, around her shoulders, so that he didn’t crowd her. He smelt like earth, bitter herbs, and just faintly of a musky man-smell not exactly like sweat but not completely dissimilar.

“Wait” she suddenly realised “Who do you talk to with a walkie-talkie?”

“You know the new DADA Professor?” He whispered conspiratorially, leaning close to her “He’s sort of a muggle born. He and I-“ he made an extremely suggestive eyebrow-wiggling leer, and winked.

“Oh! My god! Neville, that’s... that’s so great!” Hermione enthused “Is he... well, fully gay, because, this is... I mean, it’s funny that I thought he was flirting with me, sometimes!” She laughed quickly, dismissively.

“Oh, he was” Neville said comfortably “He’s not gay. I’m not either, actually.”

For some reason, this made Hermione blush.

“We’re just... good friends. Good, dick-sucking friends”

“Neville!” Hermione gasped, taking a big gulp of her wine. Neville smiled slyly, seemingly not at all surprised by her reaction.

“I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable” he said, letting his gaze drift casually away from her “I’ll stop talking about it, if-“

“I’m not uncomfortable” Hermione said quickly, and then reassessed “alright, I’m a little uncomfortable. I just... You know, I never felt like I was ever doing anything right when I was with Ron, and everyone was always picking me apart- Ron, Harry, Molly... even Ginny couldn’t really understand why... Never mind.” She gave a too-loud, embarrassed laugh “I sort of just wish I knew how to be... good... um... dick sucking friends with someone” It was easy to hide the shame on her face- Neville was gazing into the middle distance, listening, but not looking directly at her. She went to finish the last of her wine, and Neville gently took it from her fingers.

“I’m glad I didn’t make you uncomfortable” He said seriously, setting both glasses down on the table “because I actually wanted to talk about casual sex, but not if the idea freaks you out”

“Casual sex?” Hermione asked blankly. Something was happening here- she could definitely feel it everywhere his body leant against hers, could actually feel it even in the bizarrely magnetic way he didn’t look directly at her, as if he was giving her time to catch up to-

“I am not in an exclusive relationship right now” Neville said gently “And I didn’t think that you were, either. So I was wondering if you’d like to... you know, be good friends who also fuck”

“Wow, we have gone straight from dick, to fuck” Hermione said weakly.

“Oh, see, now, there was nothing straight about it!” Neville burst out gleefully “And using the word straight around me is very offensive”

“Is that how... these things are done?” Hermione puzzled “You just ask?”

“I considered creating a series of elaborate puzzles and terrifying traps that would test every aspect of your endurance” Neville said “But then I thought I’d better leave myself something for the anniversary”

“I’m just processing” Hermione said, overwhelmed.

“Hey, that’s okay- Thank you” Neville said “For considering it. Or for considering how to say no as nicely as possible” he looked at her now, searching her face, and then gently took her hand.

“You are one of my favourite people in the world, Hermione. It’s really great to be your friend. I didn’t want to do this in a way that would be ambiguous or confronting, or that would make you nervous about losing me as a friend if you gave an honest answer. In all seriousness, I have learnt my slutty, slutty ways from the plants in the greenhouse, and it’s all I can do to be a respectable professor, because plants are all about the sex”

Hermione giggled, and he brushed at his robes playfully with the hand that still held hers. “Feel that? Pollen everywhere! They _do not_ ask before they fertilise everywhere, and that is the truth”

She hadn’t felt pollen, but she had felt his chest through his robes, and it was ridiculous the affect that had on her. Suddenly she was imagining what he looked like without his clothes on, something she had absolutely never done before, and that lead effortlessly to imaging burying her face in his skin and smelling his warm, earthy scent, to being wrapped in it, in him, having him around her and over her and under her fingers. He was still leaning casually around her and her skin thrilled where they touched; her stomach felt tight and tingling and warmth radiated from the proximity of her knickers. Had it been a month since she spoke to him? Really? Had it been so long since she’d been this close to a man who wasn’t two meters taller than her? The reaction of her body seemed to suggest so.

It was strange, because with Ron there’d been no hesitation on her mind- they were young adults in love and that meant having a healthy interest in sex- but she’d never really felt carried away with her physical response to him. Sex had mostly been a slightly uncomfortable, slightly smelly affair, pursued in awkward places where Molly wouldn’t find them, and when Ron had once called her breasts “tits” in his groggy, mumbled dirty talk, she’d wanted to slap him, a feeling not precisely aligned with arousal. Now, she was undeniably having a very strong physical reaction to Neville, but her mind was trying to find problems with the idea. Wasn’t it against the _Rules_? Why would he want _her_? Could she even _have_ sex outside of a monogamous relationship? Would it distract her from work, or would fulfilling a healthy physical craving make her more productive? Would it be awkward when they passed in the corridors? What would happen if Harry found out? Or _Ron_ did?

“Hey, maybe we could mark some of those essays together” Neville suggested cheerily. He kept giving her opportunities to think, to regroup, to compose herself. He kept giving her a way out.

That, in the end, was what made it so easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 21/02:  
> Expect the next few chapters within the next week or so- as soon as I come up with enough puns, lol- and I’ve updated the main story banner to indicate that I think there’ll be about 40 chapters. At the moment it looks like each chapter will have roughly the same word count, formatting etc as we’ve enjoyed so far. Thank you all so much for your support :)


	10. Intermission

Professor Neville Longbottom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a picture! The characters I’m writing are unreliable about noticing the world around them; they often don’t describe the things (and people) that they take for granted.   
> I’ve only just come back to my art after years without drawing, so I’m still really just mucking around, trying to remember the most basic rules.   
> This is based on pictures of Tyler Posey and his cute little scrunchy smiley face (with moustache!). That’s (roughly) who I imagine Neville looking like in this story.


	11. Stoatally Unbelievable

_The noises woke him from his dreaming place. Walker noise, yes, but also proper noise, noise that made sense to any animal; breathless gasping moaning growling purring, noise of effort sustained and then rewarded, noise of play and pleasure._

_Noise of mating._

_He peered out from amidst his nest, sight-sensed through the warm, burrow-dimness. And there she was, just out of proper sight, her lanky pale body still half-moulted, coiling in the throes of mating dance, a long, drably-pelted male walker arching and laughing and twining his fingers through hers as she clawed and bit him in a frenzy of lust. She was eager; the male traced her body with his teeth and tongue, revealing more and more tender flesh as he did, his weaving head finally dipping between her legs to lap and nibble at the flesh there, and she yanked his fur and whimpered helplessly for more._

_The whisker-sense of them filled the room with their musky hunger for each other. They shed the pieces of their pelts, still intertwined, stumbling over the discarded pelts like they were drunk in their eagerness, and falling into the dreaming-place where he could get a much closer look at them._

_The male had revealed an intricately patterned hide dappled with leaves and roots and the bright little sexes of deep-drinkers, blooming and growing and seeding and decaying as if they did so just beneath the surface of his flesh. The female was soft and smooth and pale as a winter pelt, and these moults were far more appealing than the ones they had worn all year; he slithered soundlessly from his bedding and lay closer to the edge of the root burrow to watch them dance._

_The male was the one who was playing; he tormented the female with his proud, patterned body, knocking her gently away when she went to mount him and nuzzling and caressing her skin in new ways each time, ways that brought her to a breathless, begging peak, where she would reach for him once more and he would, once more, deny her. It was clear the male was enjoying this; the more wild she became the more tenderly he would stroke her. In lieu of whiskers they caressed lips and the thousand ways they had of doing this was fascinating to him; slowly, softly, with tongue, savagely, eagerly, with nipping, gently and firmly, and with laughter. The male ran his lips over her ears, her throat; her belly, her sex. The female smothered her noises with her clenched hands, and the male took them, opened them, ran his lips over them, too._

_Finally she took a fistful of the male’s pelt and dragged him up to touch mouths with her; the walker noise she made was nonsense, edged with playful threat, but the patterned male now agreed. He turned her on her belly, rubbing and caressing, and at last mounted her, carrying on with wry stoicism at first but quickly growing more desperate and eager, caught up in the same hunger that had her thrusting back against him, arching and clawing against the bedding to bring them closer and deeper and faster, both of them making short, sharp, busy noises. He was now running his nails over her skin, clutching her, wrapping his long arms around her body to pin her close to him as she shuddered and gave a trembling warble of ecstasy and sank breathlessly and bonelessly into the bedding. He clutched her long pelt aside and buried his face there, in the smooth, fragile arch of the back of her neck, and then he too found his release in a few more quick thrusts._

_Even as they started, slowly, to come back to themselves, no longer completely absorbed in the heady tangle of their lust, the patterned male’s lips lingered there- such a soft, tender place- for a kiss._


	12. (Eggplant) (Eggplant) (Sprinkle)

She had nestled against Neville in the few hours that they’d been asleep. She woke up, eye to eye with a bright yellow dandelion blooming profusely over his heart, and immediately started to worry. Was it still casual if you fucked almost until dawn and then he stayed because what was the point of him walking down to the greenhouses in the snow at 4AM? Was it still casual if you hadn’t had a partnered orgasm since you got drunk and fucked a former-slytherin-professional-quidditch-player-whose-name-you-did-not-know-the-next-day, and you were so wrapped up in it that you left what she could now see, to her mortification, were quite a lot of marks on the other person? Was it still casual if you’d orgasmed several times and your partner had only done so once? What if he’d done things to you that no one had? What if you’d begged, actually begged, for him to put his penis inside you?

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Neville whispered into her hair. She startled- she hadn’t realised he was awake.

“Probably not” she admitted, lightly touching the thick, brass-coloured ring that threaded his nipple. She was surprised when he gave a soft huff of pleasure, closing his arms a little tighter around her. Suddenly she realised what he was thinking, because his erection nudged her thigh, and she wriggled a little to look down at it, smiling despite herself. Neville had a nice penis; like most wizards’, it was uncircumsised. Slightly thicker towards the end than at the base, it wasn’t terribly long, but a little thicker than average, and curiously curved to the left. It was pierced, which, like the dozens of magical, botanically-themed tattoos that covered him from collarbone to ankle- almost everywhere covered by robes- had come as a surprise.

“Did you want to...?” She asked hopefully, and he popped his fingers into his mouth and then, smiling, leant around her to grab, with his other hand, his wand off the bedside table, slipping his wet fingers down deftly into her folds to lightly catch her clitoris between them and tug at it gently. She closed her eyes, biting her lip, the dull, pleasant ache from last nights’ activities warming as she started to get wet. He poked his wand between their bodies- a task Hermione did not, necessarily, make easy in her eagerness for him- and cast a prophylactic charm on himself.

“Neville?” She panted “I want it to be quick this time”

“Got it. Quickie morning sex. Busy day, after all. Essays to mark, lesson plans to-“ he quipped, and she put her hand firmly over his mouth, wrapping her legs eagerly around his waist as he positioned himself above her. And it _was_ quick, for her- soon she was clutching his hair, clutching at his back and ass, pressing her palm over her own mouth so that she didn’t call out right into his face, and, when he kept going after the first time she orgasmed, she grabbed his face between her hands and pressed her forehead to his.

“I’m completely serious, Neville, if you don’t cum soon, I’ll have to- to finish you with my mouth” she said breathlessly.

“Yes, Professor Granger” he said, smiling so wickedly when she gasped in indignation that she would probably have carried through with her threat right then and there, if he hadn’t just then rocked her hips back just so, and thrust into her so deeply that she completely forgot herself.

Afterwards she lay without a thought to trouble her; just the gentle aftershocks of pleasure that jolted through her as long-neglected regions of her body thrilled anew over the sudden attention they’d received. It was funny how easy it was not to feel embarrassed or awkward when she was actually with Neville, how easy his laughter and silliness made it to ask for what she wanted without thinking too much about it, and-

“Hermione?” Neville asked. He’d been propped up on his elbow, head on his hand, reading the spines of the books closest to the bed while she stared dreamily at his tattoos. “Is that a stoat?”

“Oh” when she looked at him, Salazar was curled, watching her, on his towel, which he’d dragged over to the bars. His food bowl was empty and he’d chewed the dressing off his shoulder for the first time- it lay outside the cage, on the floor. “Uh, yes. Crookshanks caught him, and... I’m taking care of him while he heals”

“Cute” Neville said, running his fingers down her back as she sat up and gathered her hair into a knot. She wasn’t sure that he was talking about Salazar.

“He’s a bit of a hood” Hermione admitted “I keep having to stun him to wash his wound”

“My gran had a ferret when I was little” Neville said, leaning back as she got out of bed, put her knickers on, and vanished the discarded dressing “Followed her everywhere”

“Did it bite?” Hermione wondered, pursing her lips to make ‘budgie noises’ at Salazar.

“All the time” Neville admitted “And it used to try and have sex with that hat of hers”

Remembering the boggart with the tall vulture hat from their third year, Hermione laughed a little.

“I wish I knew what to do other than stun him, though” she admitted.

“Hmmhm. They’ve got the same intelligence as a cat, I guess” Neville hummed thoughtfully “If a kitten bit you, it’d be because it was playing, or scared, I suppose?”

“He’s a lot bigger than a kitten” Hermione objected.

“Yeah, but, I mean, in his mind, people are as new to him as if he were a kitten, right?” Neville summoned his pants, a pair of dragonhide-patterned leggings in a violent fuchsia.

“Cats don’t exactly like people tending their wounds, no matter what age they are” Hermione argued (for no reason, and she wondered why she was even doing it, when Neville was both right and not exactly looking for a fight).

“That’s true!” Neville said easily, scooping up his robes while she still hesitated by the birdcage.

“And I think he’s been tamed before, so I doubt I scare him” she said, a bit hotly. Somehow she was even more annoyed by the fact Neville didn’t argue back. Ron never turned down a row. Now Neville came over to her, still topless, and put his arms around her, tucking her against his chest and resting his chin on her head.

“Hey, Hermione?” He said gently “I don’t have to leave straight away, if you want to hang out together?”

Hermione felt her throat thicken a little, and her eyes smarted.

“That wouldn’t be very casual” she objected.

“It’s pretty friendly, though” Neville pointed out, and she could hear him smiling “almost like something friends would do even if they weren’t fucking”

Hermione felt her shoulders release; she’d had no idea how much she’d literally gotten her back up until that moment.

“Oh my god, Neville. I’m so bad at this” she gasped, absolutely mortified.

“Are you kidding?” Neville said easily “Hermione, this sort of relationship takes heaps of work and communication! It’s like schoolwork; you’ve got to do lots of studying and critical thinking, and somehow articulate your thought processes- anyway” he kissed her hair “There’s no pressure to get it all right the first time. There’s a learning curve”

“So I did get things wrong” Hermione moaned “I’m useless at relationships!”

“Pfft” Neville scoffed “Is that what I said?”

“You said there’s no pressure to get it right, which means I got it wrong!”

“You got an Outstanding” Neville said firmly “Hermione Granger is a quick thinking, rational student who articulates her needs clearly and pursues them with passion. She can be overzealous” he turned her face up to his, his eyes sparkling “as evidenced by her sometimes... messy work”

She smiled despite herself, noticing again the love bites on his neck and scratches on his shoulders.

“Her enthusiasm is, however, extremely welcome” Neville said, his voice now soft “because she wouldn’t be the person she is if she wasn’t giving it her all”

He gently thumbed away a tear that escaped from her eye, and, grinning, said;

“Now, let’s wash the stoat!”


	13. POP Goes The Weasel

_This time, the patterned male joined burrow-pelt in the stone burrow where she tended his wounds. The killer bright one was absent, and so were the evil, quicked hands. The walkers brought him fresh food; he ate it eagerly. They watched him, and he watched them. The patterned male put his hand near the root burrow. He sensed it; it was groomed clean, and smelt lemony-bright. Like his own paw, it had no patterns on it; he and the patterned male were alike in that way. The claws were blunt and the pads not particularly fleshy; he had no fur. The patterned male did not cross his drags, but after the sensing, he did open the root burrow._

_Burrow-pelt now put her hand close to the root burrow also. It smelt lemon-bright the same way the male’s did. Their flesh smells were faint under the brightness. Neither of them crossed his drags, and he soon grew bored of waiting for them to do so; he rushed forwards and pressed his nose into burrow-pelt’s paw, eager to properly whisker-sense her smoothness._

_She startled and drew away with a small alarm cry. He was incredulous; didn’t she rush-grab-bite him every time she opened the root burrow? The patterned male did not move his hand, and, grumpy, he whipped about and nipped the proffered flesh._

_The patterned male gave a soft startle in his distant body, but when he moved his hand, it was only to drop it limply onto the stone outside the cage, like it was quicked._

_He wasn’t impressed- he hadn’t bitten it hard enough to kill it- but it was the right way to act, to drop submissively before his fearsome-playing-might. He whisker-sensed the male and felt the unearthly smoothness of his hairless skin tremble right to his core; so warm-bright-soft. He licked it, and the lemony taste was indescribably foul, so he stepped on the open hand to run his whiskers higher up the flesh, finding one of the shifting deep-drinker patterns and licking that instead. It was much more pleasant, musky-fleshy-salty without any lemony taste, and he groomed it tenderly, making amends for his bite. The patterned male very slightly lifted his hand off the stone, and he gave it an irritated look as he adjusted his balance with his tail._

_They were just so unimaginably big, these walkers! A ground dancer could climb all over them if it was courageous enough- and suddenly he decided he wanted to sight-sense the patterned male’s face. Burrow pelt often put her smooth face low to the root burrow, and he knew that she had a pale, almost unpatterned face, with dark markings above her dark eyes and slight colouration around her lips; she looked very like a typical female. He did not know the patterned male’s face, and he now coiled his body in readiness and then sprang, his three good legs outstretched to grasp the broad ledge of the walker’s shoulder._


	14. Face Time

Hermione shrieked as the ermine leapt right for Neville’s face. She grabbed wildly for her wand, amazed that Neville had not moved at all; just clenched his eyes shut. For a chaotic second she thought she must have already tried to stun the ermine- the spell was right on the tip of her tongue- and hit Neville instead. For some reason, all she could imagine was how she was going to explain being mostly naked in the bathroom with a topless Neville when he got mauled by a weasel.

“It’s okay” Neville said softly, barely opening his mouth “Hermione, it’s okay! Look”

The ermine was sitting on Neville’s shoulder, leaning around to look curiously at his face. Hermione was amazed to notice he was steadying himself by holding on to Neville’s ear.

“He’s _looking_ at you” She moaned, tugging at her hair “How are we going to get him off?”

Neville made a small negating gesture, opening one eye to peek at the ermine, who was brushing curious whiskers over Neville’s cheeks, nose, and brow. He seemed very interested in Neville’s mouth- he spent quite a bit of time curiously “whiskering” his lips, and then, when Neville released a startled breath, Salazar actually put his little paw on Neville’s lower lip, peering into his mouth. Neville reached up very slowly and gently, pushing the ermine away with the back of his hand. Hermione thought this would be a provocation too far, but instead Salazar just pushed playfully back at Neville’s hand, making a low chittering noise that didn’t sound even remotely aggressive.

“Hermione, do you think you could- maybe just gently steady him while I stoop down?” Neville asked carefully “I’m going to lean close to the counter, so that he can get down if he wants”

“Okay” Hermione said faintly, reaching over. Salazar was delighted to see her hand- he didn’t wait for her to touch him before he’d grasped her fingers gently and started licking them. She let him hold on to her while Neville folded at the waist, bowing down to the counter. Salazar looked like he was thinking about running down Neville’s back, but Hermione sort of nudged him towards the counter with her other hand, and he jumped down, unconcerned. He bolted back into the cage for a moment, then pranced playfully back out as Neville straightened, unharmed.

“That was horrifying” Hermione said, as the ermine slithered eagerly into the stone sink and stuck his nose down the drain.

“I’m an idiot” Neville said “I should have thought he’d want to see my face”

“Why would he?” Hermione shrilled.

“Because I have a very handsome face” Neville grinned at her, and she glared at him in exasperation.

“Cats know that faces are where the action happens” Neville said “I mean, when you think about it, they have almost all their sensory organs stacked in one place just like we do, so I guess they know what faces, like, _mean_ ”

“Are you trying to tell me that you just... made out with my stoat?” Hermione said.

“Don’t kink shame me” Neville laughed “I’ve seen you kiss Crookshanks on the head”

Salazar had found her bath towel and was busily dragging it off the rail and back to his cage. She tried to grab it back, and the ermine fearlessly engaged in tug-of-war, until she gave up because she didn’t want to hurt him.

“He is not even remotely scared” She said grumpily.

Neville had dampened a ball of cotton with the golden potion that Hagrid had given her; he dabbed it on the Ermine while he was busily stuffing the towel into the cage, and, though his skin twitched, he didn’t even look around. Neville dabbed a few more times to make sure the wound was thoroughly moistened, and then nodded at Hermione, who summoned a bandage and looped it around Salazar with the direction of her wand. It worked fine; he didn’t seem bothered at all. She scourgified the cage, and, as the ermine dove between the thick layers of towel that now took up much of his space, closed the door.

She gave a little sigh of relief; Neville had been right about the ermine not being particularly aggressive when it was comfortable, but it was hard to think of it as no more or less frightening than a feral cat. She caught a glimpse of Neville’s huge smile out of the corner of her eye, and gave a little huff of laughter.

“Don’t be a know-it-all” she scolded.

“See how annoying it is?” He twinkled, and she slapped his bare chest and, laughing and wriggling as he grappled with her playfully, they fell together into the bath.


	15. One Hoopy Ferret Frood

_Burrow Pelt started to let him out of the root burrow often when she was in the stone dray, as long as he ate first and didn’t scare her. They played with each other, and she started to settle; she never made alarm noise anymore._

_She did many bizarre things. Often she would lie in a stone hole filled with hot water, holding a pile of nesting material. If he jumped onto the nesting material and it got wet, she’d rebuke him with nonsense-noise. If he climbed onto the islands of her huge body and groomed them affectionately, she would wriggle and laugh and drip water on to his head._

_He tried water dancing in the water; this startled her, but he was a powerful water dancer and it lead to a long grooming session where she snuggled him in nesting material and stroked and nuzzled him until his whiskers hummed. After that, they played that grooming game often, even if he didn’t water dance; she’d throw nesting material over him and play-spar through it until he took it in his teeth and brought it to her; then she’d coil it around his flesh and rub and groom him until he was sleek as a kitten and often dreaming._

_Once, as he watched her from the smaller stone hole (the one that was just the right size for him, in the same way the other was just the right size for her) she put her nesting materials to one side and groomed her face with her hands. He didn’t know why she did this, since she had no whiskers. She sensed as frustrated. It was hard to know properly when she was in the water, but he was becoming clever about her habits._

_She floated there still for a moment, and then ran her fingers idly down her body, lingering at the places he assumed were her glands, since she liked to rub them against the patterned male whenever he visited the stone burrow. She produced a very small cry of pleasure-noise, tipping her head back and closing her eyes, like she was being groomed by a mate. Her questing fingers slipped below the water-_

_And then he noticed the killer bright one. It was never in the stone burrow when he was outside of the root burrow- but now it was. It squinted at him from the floor with dangerous yellow eyes. It’s long whiskers were sleek with disgust._

_“This is my walker burrow too!” He made a defiant stand against the bright one; he used the ground noise for warrens of ground-kickers who lived in relative community. He tried the noise for the second and third male in the flier nest, who helped to raise the eggs._

_The bright one was not clever enough to know this noise, but now it carelessly raised a paw and started grooming, sight-smell-noise-sensing indifference._

_“Share?” It noised acerbically, like he was the stupid one. It was a strange noise, but it called to mind two females raising the same kittens; it wasn’t the right noise for this strange burrow truce, not really, but it was close enough._

_“Share” he agreed._

_Then burrow pelt suddenly noticed the bright one, and leaped out of the stone circle so hastily that she stumbled and fell on her ass. As she moaned in pain noise and clutched her tail-less rump, he looked back down at the bright one. They didn’t need a common noise to agree that this kitten would be a long time in the den._


	16. He Never Died

She taught all her classes in one classroom. It was part of the rebuilt castle- she’d be offered any arrangement of rooms that she herself had studied in as a student, but she found it too strange to teach in those classrooms; she spent the lessons jumpy and tense, waiting for the “real” professor to arrive.

The most luxurious part of being in the rebuilt castle were the huge windows that looked out either upon a pretty courtyard with a topiary owl in it (that she’d never actually found), or out over a peculiar, tightly spiralled outdoor staircase that did not obviously lead to anywhere. The view depended on how the castle felt; this suited Hermione because she couldn’t have chosen which one was her favourite. Today, it was the owl. A golden carpet of crocus had replaced the dull winter dirt; tangled rambling roses, covered in white-fringed blooms with buttery yellow centres cascaded down the walls. The flowers that made up the owl’s yellow eyes were blooming with something fat and fleshy that looked awfully, uncannily like real eyes. It was beautiful; she opened the windows and wished she could visit.

Instead, she was cleaning. She was sure she’d never been so feral when she was a student; they left unspeakable things smeared all over the desks, doodled in ink and with their wands, left gum and toffee stuck to the undersides of chairs, and there were always secreted stashes of the matchsticks, feathers, and teacups that they were supposed to transfigure swept into nooks and crannies when they couldn’t be bothered to tidy up properly. She liked to tidy after every class, but inevitably there were things to do at the end of the day, when she would have preferred to be with Hagrid, Neville, or Salazar and Crookshanks.

The cat and ermine had now managed an uneasy truce; she didn’t leave them together unattended, but if she was in her rooms, she could now let the ermine wander as he pleased. Initially he’d returned to the birdcage to sleep, but he’d figured out a few weeks ago that he could sneak in to her bed after Crookshanks fell asleep. It was nice to wake up with the warm, friendly little bodies nestled against her. She flicked her wand over a desk, and would have passed it, then out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a piece of graffiti that had been charmed against her scourgify.

Tutting in annoyance- she’d just taken the sixth year Slytherins, and as much as she admired their perfection of the graffiti-sticking charm, which was an advanced piece of work, it was an absolute nuisance to clean- she leant over to examine it. It was colour-changing ink, and, just as she looked, it turned from silvery to a ghastly crimson that made her stomach drop. Logically she knew it wasn’t blood, but logic had nothing to do with her feelings; the strange message chilled her despite the lovely day outside; ‘He Never Died’

What did it mean? Who never died? Harry? Only, he was ‘the boy who lived’, not ‘the boy who never died’. What if it meant...? The letters oozed to a thin, translucent gold while she stared. It did not make them less alarming to her. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and suddenly she absolutely couldn’t stand it any more- she fled her classroom, walking quickly, almost jogging, to reach the greenhouses before dinner.

“I thought it was a Gee Suss thing” Neville said breezily, sweeping a handful of seeds from the bench into his hand and tipping them into a neatly labelled jar “There’s a Ravenclaw girl who’s always going on about him, and Gwod who created everything”

“It’s God” Hermione corrected absently; Neville hadn’t completely dismissed her nameless fear, but he didn’t seem particularly worried.

“Are you sure?” Neville made a face “That’s a swear, isn’t it? Like when you say ‘oh my god’ right before you-“

“Neville! It’s- um- it’s profane” she acknowledged “To use it like that”

“Thank goodness” Neville said “I gave someone a detention for yelling it in class”

“Don’t the upper form Ravenclaws and the Slytherins have Herbology together?” She asked hastily, not wanting to get (more) side-tracked.

“Yup” Neville arranged the big brass watering cans more precisely how he liked them.

“So it was after a Slytherin class you first saw it? The writing?”

“Huh? Oh, no... I mean, it’s all over the place. In the dungeons, on the student dining tables in the great hall... even in the Gryffindor common room. I just thought it was a ‘meme’. It’s been around for a while”

“It doesn’t... unnerve you?” Hermione fretted. Neville gave her a curious side-long look. “No-oh” he hummed slowly “But if it’s bothering you, I can ask Vy about it. He’s Head of Slytherin. If they started it, he’d know about it”

“Vy?” She asked blankly- then realised “You mean Professor Augustus? The muggle-born DADA teacher? The one that you’re-“

“Yeah” Neville giggled.

“He was a Slytherin?” she found Neville’s collusion with a former Slytherin more disturbing than was merited; it wasn’t like he was the first person to do it- she’d done it, for goodness’ sake! Still, she was worked up, and it troubled her.

“Please be careful” she said, giving him a small kiss. He blushed with pleasure. “Do you want to stay? I have some cheese, and fruit, and wine...” he trailed off invitingly.

“Hm? Oh. No” Hermione said, unable to concentrate; she’d search the library for the phrase, that would be a good place to start. She waved absently and left, heading for the library.


	17. T(ayra)-Rex

_Now that he had freedom of the larger dray, he spent his time at play. The bright one and burrow pelt would leave the dray to hunt, sealing it behind them as if he were a wandering kit. This suited him very well; he didn’t care where they went to hunt as long as the food they brought him was plentiful and delicious. It was._

_So he explored the dray at large, rearranging nesting materials to his satisfaction and to please burrow pelt, and playing, during the dry times, in the stone hole. The perfectly smooth surface was wonderful for rolling-over-and-over-until-he-was-dizzy. It also had such a sloped bank on one end as to make a very good slide._

_Near burrow pelt’s dreaming place she had stored nesting material on steep ledges for later. At first, especially with his injured side, it was extremely hard to climb these ledges and push the nesting material down onto the dray floor, but knowing how much it would please burrow pelt, he persisted until he could bolt up and down the steep ledges with ease. So far he had not figured out how to arrange the nesting material on the ground in a way that pleased burrow pelt- she rebuked him and stowed it back away every time- but this was just how she was._

_The wide ledge of her dreaming place (which was now his favourite place to dream also) was a low, dark side-burrow that was very comfortable; at the back of it, he found loose rocks, with a tunnel beyond which led from burrow pelt’s part of the big stone dray to others. He did not explore far; there were mouse pups, and, occasionally, unwary adults, but there were tunnels where the smell-sense of slider was strong, and he found coils of desiccated skin thicker and many lengths longer than his body. Sliders were unusual near the big stone dray; he’d never eaten one, but once he’d eaten a toad that had been poisoned by a slider, and he was so poorly he nearly rotted away into the walls of his burrow. Nonetheless, he sensed that there were paths through this tunnel that would lead outside the stone dray and back into the wild, and, especially now that the females would be rutting and dancing, he considered finding them._

_However, while ground dancers may brux, purr, and huff, they did not laugh, and it was a sense-noise that he’d become attached to. There was lots of it in the stone dray; burrow pelt, whenever she played with him or enjoyed the way he’d arranged the nesting materials, the patterned male, who wore laughter like a most beautiful pelt- even the bright one had a way of sight-whisker-sensing that he’d secretly started to copy, practicing in the many reflective stones of the burrow._

_Laughter reminded him of another time; his walker mother, but also other walkers, the patterns of their pelts so familiar and strange to him._

_He’d decided he would learn to make walker noise, like the bright one. He would cause all walkers to roll with laughter; they would fawn for him and fear him in equal measure, recognising his many scars and his murderous courage. The females would squirm on their bellies in their eagerness to wrap him in nesting material and play the nuzzling grooming game. He would definitely keep burrow pelt, because he’d come to favour her laughter most of all, but having at least two or three other laughing females would suit him well._

_Life in the big stone dray would be perfect. All that was left was to figure out the noise._


	18. A Sett Date

She felt sometimes like she was going mad. Now that she’d noticed the graffiti, it was everywhere; always exactly the same ominous phrase- ‘he never died’- scribbled in the margins of library books, doodled with a finger on window-glass, and carved into the tables in the Dining Hall.

Neville hadn’t gotten back to her about it; everyone was busy with preparations for the ceremony on the 3rd of May. The students would spend an intensive week doing memorial-themed spell work in all their classes, from constructing living floral wreathes in herbology, to charming an orchestra of crickets (usually bred for feeding the Care of Magical Creatures animals) to chirp the school song. She didn’t want to ask Neville about it again and sound completely insane, nor was she bold enough to approach the DADA teacher directly, although he certainly made it clear with his smouldering smiles that she was welcome to do so.

She visited the Gryffindor common room for the first time since she’d returned to Hogwarts as a professor, and was surprised to find it absolutely different; Neville was the head of Gryffindor now, so she assumed he’d organised the transformation. Instead of a cosy and rather traditional English living room, it looked more like a Turkish bazaar, with brass lanterns, bold tapestries (mostly of lions), brightly-patterned floor cushions, and deep rugs. Many of the tables had been replaced with comfortable, Korsi-style pieces of furniture with magical heaters beneath their jewel-coloured blankets. A huge, magnificently enamelled samovar bubbled in a fruit-and-chocolate filled kitchenette, and the room smelt pleasantly of tea and nuts roasted with butter.

It was both a relief and a loss; she avoided most of the places in the castle that had been her haunts as a student- so many of the people who’d once lived in them had also died in them- but she never really thought of them as gone.

Of course, you couldn’t raise children amidst the ashes of the dead.

“Professor Granger?” A trio of third years looked at her curiously “Is something wrong?”

She regathered her thoughts.

“No, no” she assured them, smiling “Only, I’m wondering about something. I’ve seen some graffiti, around the castle-“ (all of the children within earshot were trying very hard not to look guilty) “-and one phrase caught my attention. ‘He never died’. Do you know anything about that?”

“I’ve never noticed, Professor” one of the trio fibbed effortlessly “Do you guys?-“ he looked enquiringly at his friends, who shook their heads quickly.

“I can see it, right there” Hermione said, as patiently as possible, pointing to a discarded scrap of parchment with a bunch of scribbled homework notes on it, not yet vanished by the house elves.

“Oh, yes. I suppose it is” the student said wonderingly “Fancy that!”

“Look, Whingly, no one is in trouble” Hermione said in frustration “I just want to know what it means”

“Sorry Professor” chirped his friend “It’s a Slytherin thing, I think. They started it, and now everything thinks it’s cool. It’s got something to do with the Battle”

“The Battle of Hogwarts?” Hermione asked faintly.

“Or the War, or something. But we don’t know anything else”

“Thank you, Muller” Hermione said. She gave Whingly a quick glare, but he shrugged it off with an infuriating smile, and Hermione, no closer to satisfaction, left.

She had a whole series of lesson plans to design; she wanted to teach each year to transfigure a memorial candle- the first years could do very simple ones, but she expected more creativity and personalisation from her advanced class- and, once completed, they’d be lit and set adrift on the lake in the barges normally used to deliver the first years to the castle. Hagrid had promised the lake would be as smooth as glass; he thought the giant squid would like the flickering reflections on the water. He’d reseeded the lake shore (which tended to become a ruined, muddy mess during the thaw) with fresh grass, so that the entire school could watch the outdoor display. She needed to concentrate, and yet the only thing that really interested her lately besides mysterious graffiti was Salazar, whose wound was more or less mended, and who would soon have to be released. He’d become such an important part of her day, it was hard to imagine going on without him- Hogwarts itself would be a less interesting place when he was gone.

When she got back to her room, Salazar had knocked all her books off their shelves again. For once she didn’t care at all. Crookshanks trotted off to his food bowl, and Hermione looked for the errant ermine, desperate to cuddle his warm little body and play with his furry feet. She finally found him tucked in her bed, deep under the covers, his little eyelids flickering as he dreamt.

Without really thinking about it, she pulled out her wand. The charm was an obscure one; she’d read about it in the diary of a wizard who’d had a rather strange relationship with his pot belly pig. Mentally she rehearsed it, the tiny, level, circular wand movement and the part of the incantation she’d have to adjust; then she whispered; “S _omnium Mustela!_ ”

A silvery halo of mist seemed to trickle from the tips of the ermine’s whiskers, drifting back over his head until it was as if he was wearing a flat, weightless hat. The picture that presently formed on it was tiny; she had to lean close to make out the details. It would obviously work better on a pig because it had a much larger head.

Nonetheless, she could now see, through the misty lens, what the little animal was dreaming about.

For a moment she blinked in confusion- it looked as if the spell was simply reflecting her face back at her. Then, as the dim, slightly fuzzy image moved- cocking her head, rolling her eyes, bursting in to silent laughter, Hermione realised what she was looking at.

Salazar’s warm, happy little dream, was of her.


	19. Minkie Blankie

_Burrow pelt was inexplicably clingy lately. She kept checking his wound, despite the fact it was completely mended- had, in fact, formed a very good, thick scar. When she laboured over her piles of nesting material she now wore him draped over her shoulders, where he could nuzzle her ear and whisker her until she laughed, but even her pleasure was oddly muted. She did not take him hunting, but she reached for him in her dreaming, reluctant to let him far from her sight-sense when she was in the dray._

_He tried to ask the bright one what was going on, but the only noise they could agree on was that she was weaning- obviously wrong, since he wasn’t teat-feeding her- but as close as they could reasonably come with little common noise._

_He missed her happiness. He even tried to encourage her to bring the patterned male to the den- maybe he’d cheer her- but she remained completely oblivious._

_Then it happened that she played with him for a while with a hopeless, horrible whisker-sense radiating from her. She did not laugh once, even when he hunted her her favourite tuft of flier fur. Water leaked from her eyes. She dashed it away and more came. He urgently asked the bright one if she was poisoned or diseased, but the bright one could only explain her agony with the same sense-noise that she made, something like dread-fear-pain, but not._

_She gathered him up in her soft, smooth hands, cuddling him against her face, and made an awful noise when he licked the salty water from her cheek- a hollow laughter that was not in any way joyous._

_She made walker noise to him over and over as she tucked him into his root burrow and sealed him in. This was very strange, and dread-confusion had overtaken his concern for her- he burrowed into his nesting material, then changed his mind and jumped at the roots, biting and clawing at them in a fruitless attempt pull them open._

_Burrow pelt wiped her cheeks, drew a deep breath, and carried him, trapped in the root burrow, from her stone burrow and into the larger dray. The smell-noise-sight-sense was overwhelming after the calm of the stone burrow. There were other walkers who peered at him as burrow pelt whipped past them. He arched at them, puffing up his body and showing his teeth._

_Burrow pelt took him outside, into a golden, dusky twilight. When she reached the deep-drinker where her bright one had ambushed him, she tried to remove him from the root burrow, but he hid and squirmed away from her; instead she set the root burrow on the ground and it vanished, along with his nesting material and food bowl. He froze, absolutely shocked to be so exposed and in the wild again._

_“I’m so sorry, Salazar, but this is the right thing to do” burrow pelt sobbed, whirling aside from him and stumbling away, her long strides already leaving him behind. “I love you”_

_And for the first time, he understood her completely._


	20. Second Intermission

[](https://ibb.co/tYv95Y6)


	21. Harry Otter and the Weasel

She’d cried herself to sleep almost every night since she’d released Salazar. The air of pageantry and excitement that surrounded the fast-approaching memorial on may third was surreal; she drifted through the week of preparations with a growing numbness. Each candle her students submitted had to be examined and marked almost immediately; on how complete the transfiguration was, on how different the final product was from the material that had created it, and on artistic merit and respect for the occasion. Minerva had taken an interest, and though she was careful not to step on Hermione’s toes, the extra pressure of examining and marking the candles under the gaze of her own former transfiguration teacher had only intensified her sense of disorientation.

Then Crookshanks went missing. She had no idea how, or even when, but at some stage it had dawned on her that each time she’d glanced towards the little sun bed he napped on in her classroom, or his food bowl, or the spotin the library on the shelf next to ‘Everette Ichabod’s world of magical cakes and biscuits’ where he liked to sleep while she was reading, he wasn’t there, and that he hadn’t actually been there for a while. The pets of wizards and witches seemed to live unusually long lives, but Crookshanks hadn’t been young when she’d gotten him; he was certainly elderly now, and the injustice of that, of the idea that he had now crept quietly off somewhere to die in peace, as cats would- but right now? Right at this awful, strange, miserable time?- devastated her. She took sick for therest of the day, and the next, Mcgonagal expressing absolutely no question or doubt that she needed the respite when she asked.

Harry and Ron arrived for the memorial. Where ever in the castle they had chosen to stay, they didn’t bother her. Maybe it was a pointed snub; she was thankful, anyway. They would be making speeches- she doubted that they’d even re-written what they’d said last year or in the years before that; Harry would talk about Dumbledore and how much his unappreciated, unknown sacrifices had shaped the eventual triumph of Good Over Evil. Ron’s speech would actually be surprisingly better, or at least more topical, because he would talk about how much loss- of families, siblings, friends, and innocence- shaped a generation of wizards and witches. He usually embellished it with a few self-aggrandising bits about his place in that network of absence, but Hermione had written the majority of it, and it was always moving.

There was no question of missing the ceremony; reporters from the prophet and other wizardly journals from around the world would be there, as well as dignitaries and representatives of the Ministry of Magic. The veil of mystique and aberration that surrounded the first wizarding war had undeniably contributed to the second; proper immortalisation of the dead and acknowledgement of the scope their virtue and sacrifice was now considered a priority of the magical world, absolutely vital to prevent the reemergence of wizard-supremacist regimes in future.

Necessity didn’t make it easier; Hermione clawed on the backless, floor-length white dress and pale golden gauze over-robe she always wore to these sort of events, and dragged her hair into a ruthless high pony tail, the bushy, tangled length of which she stuffed into the outfit’s matching hat. Occasionally she’d worn heels for this; she was always photographed with Harry and Ron at these events, and more than once she’d suffered the mortification of having to stand on a box to be in frame. Today she just slipped her feet back in to the worn, comfortable dragon hide boots she taught in- you couldn’t see them under the dress anyway. Mostly.

She looked awful; worse than usual. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, and her face was wan. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten, and her shoulders, elbows, and wrists looked knobby and odd. Her hair was so bushy that it actually caused the sleekly tapered cone of her hat (very stylish when she’d bought it) to bulge misshapenly. She turned her back on the mirror, as if it were the problem, and left for the Great Hall.

The speeches would be made before dinner; speaking guests were seated at the head table with the teachers. Other guests sat amongst the students, who were allowed to sit anywhere for once, but still mostly sat at their house tables. Camera bulbs flashed and popped intermittently around the hall, washing the colour away from the scene. Many students had enchanted the school emblems on the breasts of their robes to show the faces of the heroes or martyrs that they were related to, or who they had been friends with, or with whom they could claim some other distant sympathy. She’d become used to seeing them this way now, these once-alive witches and wizards (and Dobby); she felt nothing.

Harry and Ron greeted her with warmth that felt far too cheery to be genuine. Ron’s hands lingered too long on the thin fabric between his fingers and the small of her back when he hugged her; she only realised how must weight she must have lost when she recognised the lust in his eyes; he’d always preferred her body when it was so slight and frail that she felt like she might float away.

It started; she stared numbly at her empty plate, barely raising her head to acknowledge applause each time someone finished saying something that was supposed to be profound. She regathered herself a little when she realised it was time for the headmistress to speak; Mcgonagall looked regal and serious in her tartan dress robes. Her speeches rarely got written up in the prophet, but they were usually the best; who, really, had lost more? She’d known every student and professor, past and present, who’d been killed. Many of them were her friends. If Hogwarts had been the centre of the Second Wizarding War, she was the centre of Hogwarts.

That was when it happened.

A dozen- two dozen!- spell-flares went off throughout the hall, largely concentrated at the Slytherin Table; the rapid pompf-pompf-pompf of dozens of wands going off almost simultaneously drowned out Mcgonagall’s greeting to the guests. Something arced above the tables, trailing green smoke. There were scattered screams of genuine fear, and many more giggly shrieks of successful mischief. A bright banner of green ribbon unfurled and formed the words ‘He Never Died’ above the heads of the students.

Hermione clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. Her drawn wand trembled in her fingers, and somehow she was standing, although she didn’t know how.

Harry and Ron were also standing, shoulder to shoulder, looking like they were ready to blast the Slytherin table to bits; a few teachers had ducked beneath the edge of the table, including Neville, who’d dragged Ginny down with him and was somehow holding a sword.

The room was chaotic; the students were babbling in excitement and thrill, very few of them old enough to be really afraid. Professor Mcgonagall clutched the podium behind which she’d been speaking; she looked furious, but her mouth was trembling. Camera bulbs exploded, all directed at the ceiling. Reporters started calling eager questions about the show- thankfully they were all too surprised to magnify their voices, so they barely added to the din.

The ribbon hung in the air, ululating gently and spelling out that phrase that had haunted her since she’d noticed it written on a desk.

There was a small burst of spell flare from the teacher’s table- as Hermione looked around, the Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher gave his wand an elegant little flick- very Slytherin- dispelling the ribbon. He gave the students of his House a pointed look, and, stepping aside from the tense line of teachers, he walked over to Mcgonagall. Hermione noticed Neville reach for his robes as he walked past, but Ginny was now climbing warily to her feet, and he was distracted.

Professor Augustus whispered to the Headmistress, the small, tense movements of his hands giving no clue as to the content of his message. Whatever he said, it surprised her; her face clouded with confusion and she glanced over her shoulder to the big brass memorial plaque ( _‘Qui Amantur Nunquam Moriuntur’_ ) behind the teacher’s table before looking back to the DADA teacher.

Not to be left out, Harry had edged up to them, Ron right behind him. The room finally fell silent, every head turned towards the group in anticipation. The Headmistress made up her mind and stepped back to the podium with renewed composure. Behind her, Harry and Ron glared mistrustfully at Professor Augustus, who folded his twisted black wand into his sleeve and smiled benignly at them. Professor Mcgonagal cleared her throat, and spoke.

“Good Evening, students, and welcome, to our esteemed guests. Before I speak any more on the importance of the Memorial for which we are gathered tonight, it seems I have to make an unexpected explanation, and right a dreadful wrong.

“I am to understand that the demonstration we have witnessed tonight, largely carried out by students of the Slytherin House, is an organised protest against the omission of a certain name from the list of those students who were killed during the Second Wizarding War.

“Indeed, he was almost the very first victim of the war, and it is an intolerable oversight.

“Because there has been no commemoration of his death, and there was never a body to bury, the Slytherins and their allies use the phrase ‘He Never Died’ to offer some tribute to him.

“It is clever, and it is just.” The Headmistress’s voice thickened slightly “It is what we wish were the truth of any of the fine witches and wizards, many of them very young, that we lost to the Second Wizarding War.

“For years we have dared to say ‘Lest We Forget’- Even while our memorials were shamefully incomplete.

“I extend my personal Apology to those students who have made their feelings about this so clear tonight. I award ten house points to every student courageous enough and just enough to be a part of this protest.”

It was so silent in the hall that they could hear the thunder of stones into hourglasses outside; a great many of them, Hermione guessed, would be emeralds.

“I’m also very sorry to the student in question” Mcgonagal said seriously, turning to the plaque behind the teacher’s table and waving her wand to make space for a new name amongst the rest.

“He will no longer be forgotten.”

There was an explosion of triumphant cheers around the hall as she added the name;

‘Draco Lucius Malfoy’.


	22. In The Mink

_Not again, not again!_

When the shock wore off, he charged after burrow pelt. Minutes later, sides heaving, he had to stop. He was wide out in the open, and it was after dusk; he’d never hear an owl coming. He would never make it back to the castle just running headlong along the path- his legs were too short- and even if he did, the door would be closed.

_What sort of dumb cunt just dumped a ferret back outside after taming it and feeding it cat food for more than two months?_

Now that he was thinking again, the thoughts came far too fast; it was like waking from a particularly disconcerting dream. Where had he been? How much time had passed in an endless stream of animal consciousness?

_Merlin’s balls, had he fucked a stoat?_

There was the faint scrape of talons in the distance; it was as loud as a curse. He dove for a hedge and the ghostly shape of the owl flared, claws sweeping just above where he’d been frozen. He took off, weaving from hedge to hedge at a slightly easier pace. He couldn’t go back to the rabbit burrow near the dungeons where he’d been living; instinct told him that it would be occupied now, and though he was well fed and fit from his easy time in the castle, he didn’t want to fight another animal.

He was used to sleeping at night, curled up with that bint from the castle; now suddenly he’d been plunged back into the teeming, deadly darkness of the grounds. It was difficult, too, to properly remember the lessons of his time as an animal; it was like the two states of thought couldn’t fully coexist. His ferret brain reacted uncritically on a melange of sensory input- no real sense of time or identity, no particular ambition except a fully belly and a warm den. It had memories, but they lacked explicable context or order; they just were. The other part of him, the thinking part, knew he’d been born a wizard. How he’d ended up like this, his name or the names of his parents- even the real name of the witch who’d been taking care of him- were beyond him, lost in a haze of ferret-thought. Now the injustice of it all, the unfairness of his suffering and loss, the weird dysmorphia of expecting one body and having another made it impossible to interpret the feedback of his changed senses; it hurt when his sensitive whiskers brushed against anything, it hurt in his eyes as he tried, through sheer willpower, to see in proper colour. His mind was in revolt against his body and it just wasn’t fair! It wasn’t fair!

He didn’t know what happened next. He couldn’t cry, but that’s what he felt like; howling and screaming at the injustice of the world and the emptiness of his life. He’d never been more alone in the world, or more conscious of his aloneness. He was trapped in this horrible, mismatched skin and he always would be.

Somewhere in the dark, he gave up.

_When the bright one came for him, it was like greeting a mate. He’d been scratched to pieces reclaiming his burrow from the young striped digger who’d taken it- he might have been rotting into the loose dirt of the chaotically excavated burrow for all he knew- when he became aware of a rough tongue lathing his wounds._

_It lay next to him as he rubbed against it’s silken whiskers, greeting it frantically, desperately. It looked awkward in the burrow; the striped digger had made the burrow somewhat larger, but it was still too small for a bright one more accustomed to cavernous walker dwellings. He burrowed into the bright fur, so thankful- so thankful, enjoying the purring warmth._

_They left the burrow together. It was dark in the vast; the bright one trotted confidently towards the place where no wild animals went, where there were far too many predatory fliers for safety. The fur on his back stood up as they passed beneath the silent shadows; the bright one padded along with confidence, but he was frightened. He would never have come if he hadn’t been desperate for the promised safety and comfort of burrow pelt and her stone dray; knowing of the idea that he had to get back to her- that he wasn’t himself if he didn’t- consumed him. How he could conjure such a complicated idea was completely beyond him; it was just that suddenly he needed the walker like he needed food or air, and he couldn’t explain exactly when the wind changed like that._

_The bright one knew the ways of the big stone dray well; they wove through secret tunnels that had no smell of habitation, and crept across wide stone fields that stretched much further then he could whisker-sense. At times the dimness was as complete as the deepest burrow, at others he was almost blind in the vast brightness. Every now and again they’d catch some sense of walkers; the bright one avoided them. Finally they squirmed through a rocky, familiar burrow; his own scent was on the floors here, and it was funny to watch the fat bright one squirm through the tumbled rocks at the end that led to the space under burrow pelt’s dreaming place. It was a triumphant return- he was ready to run to burrow pelt, to scold her for losing him but also to nuzzle her until they both forgot about it- but something was wrong. The stone burrow was filled with strange walkers and their violent noise- and as he and the bright one hid beneath the dreaming place, nervous, he wondered who on earth was the source of such angry noise._


	23. Unmusked!

“He never bloody died, all right!” Ron exploded as he paced “Because he didn’t die! He was turned into a bloody ferret, and he deserved it!”.

It was funny that the three of them had retired to her apartment without another word exchanged after the ceremony. It was the first time that Harry or Ron had been to her rooms, and yet it somehow felt right, to recap together the unexpected events of the evening.

“Ron” Harry said weakly “He was, like, eleven”

“He was a git” Ron said belligerently “And his family were all ruddy Death Eaters! Not a one of them isn’t in Azkaban now, and you think he wouldn’t have been just as bad?”

Harry, looking down at his hands, was obviously upset.

“He was just a child. We all were” he said softly “I don’t know what he might have been, and neither do you. Because he died”

“Soft cock” Ron said hotly “Hermione, what do you think?”

“What?” Hermione snapped back to the present. A very strange, very uncomfortable thought had seized her mind, and she knew that it was crazy- absolutely, utterly crazy!- and she hadn’t been listening to a word Ron said.

“Remember that dirty sod? You punched him in third year”

“Y-yes, I remember him” she said thinly.

“Is that Neville’s sweater?” Harry asked. He must have been desperate, because he knew it was Neville’s; Molly had knitted it the year that Neville’s grandmother had died and he’d spent Christmas with the rest of them at the Burrow. He’d ended up needing it, because he slept outside in a tent in the snow- Molly had tended to vastly overpopulate the burrow on Christmas, inviting anyone she could to make up for the people who would not be there.

“He must have left it here the other day. I was helping him mark essays” Hermione said quickly.

“Watch out, Hermione” Ron said darkly “There’s only one reason men leave their clothes in a girl’s room”

“And what reason is that, exactly?” Hermione asked frostily, somehow both relieved and annoyed that Harry had set her up like this; she didn’t exactly want to talk about murdered children either, but throwing Neville between her and Ron when he was looking for a fight was low.

“Just don’t pity shag Neville, that’s all I’m saying” Ron said condescendingly “Imagine what the prophet would do with that after that thing with the quidditch player!”

“Why. Exactly.” Hermione ground out “Would. It. Be. A. Pity. Shag?”

“Oh, come on” Ron snorted, rolling his eyes.

“That’s it!” Hermione shrieked. It was as if the protective numbness that had enclosed her had evaporated “You don’t know the FIRST thing about Neville Longbottom, Ron, and let me tell you, he’s TWICE the wizard you are, as well as being KIND and FUNNY and GOOD-“

They were both staring at her now, acting like she’d grown another head, and she snapped.

“Stop looking at me like you’ve never seen me before! I am Hermione Granger, I am an adult woman, NOT a girl, and the only person I’ve EVER ‘pity shagged’ is YOU, RONALD WEASLEY!”

The silence was broken only by Crookshanks wheezing in a way that sounded very much like laughter. Hermione stared at him, lurking just under the edge of bed like an orange dust bunny, in shock- then she snapped her head away before Ron or Harry noticed the cat, or, more importantly, the pale little animal that stood next to him.

Ron had gone from bright red to deathly pale. Harry had the audacity to look uncomfortable.

“You know what?” Hermione said “I’m exhausted. Listening to long, poorly considered speeches by impossibly awful, self-absorbed... wankers- I’m done. Leave me alone.”

She hustled them towards the door, heart pounding, as they spoke over her, and each other, both wanting to correct her and shame her for her outburst.

“If you see Neville around, tell him I’m ready for my pity shag now” Hermione said sharply as she shoved them into the corridor and whipped the door shut behind them.

She collapsed against it, so completely overwhelmed that her whole body trembled. Her eyes landed on the curious little faces, she strode over to the bed and fell to her knees beside it. Salazar stared intently at her, his whiskers shivering. His back was up a little; he was afraid of her again. She gritted her teeth against the riot of conflicting emotion thundering through her.

“Draco Lucius Malfoy, if that’s you in there, you had better tell me, Right. Bloody. Now!”


	24. Ferret Face

_Draco Lucius Malfoy?_

_The familiar noise was a shock. He wanted so much to be in her arms that he dropped his back and hastened up to her, careful not to move so quickly that he’d startle her. He put his feet up on her knees and noised at her anxiously, and she reached for him with trembling fingers, caressing his neck._

_“Oh my god. Oh my god” she whispered, pale as a ghost “Malfoy”_

_He pressed his face into her palm, shivering as she whispered his name. Of course his name was Draco Malfoy- how had he forgotten? He tried to pick out the sounds that made up her name, but he couldn’t- he was sure he knew her, but it was so difficult to glean any real understanding from the way his ferret mind interpreted speech; the idea that the wizard in him had a name and that name unlocked his ability to- to actually think about himself... it bordered on the overwhelming. He was afraid if he pressed to hard, he may simply regress. So he held her, ducked his head out from under her hand and clutched it, pressed his face to it desperately. If she banished him again, he would die; if not immediately, sooner or later. Draco Malfoy would have his guts scooped out by an owl or a badger or a wolf; a wound would become infected and he’d die agonisingly of blood poisoning; his burrow would collapse or flood and he’d be trapped, the breath crushed out of him._

_At that moment he gave himself wholly to the witch who’d somehow_ found _him. They were inextricably bound- anything he ever possessed would belong to her, because she’d been the one to give him back himself. If he was never physically a wizard again, then... then at least he would be one in his soul. Because of her._

_She was crying again. She drew him into her lap, and gathered the bright one there, too, squeezing them both rather more roughly then was necessary._

_“I’m such an idiot” she sobbed “Oh, Crookshanks, if you hadn’t... Oh my god”_

_So the bright one was Crookshanks; he looked at it sombrely. It was funny to think that his ferret-self had assumed that cats could speak to people. He owed it, too._

_“I won’t forget” he noised to it reassuringly “not what I owe you, or anything else. I am-“ he didn’t know the animal noise for his name, couldn’t even conjure up an image of himself to substitute “I am sure I won’t forget” he finished lamely._

_The cat noised for food, and jumped out of the witch’s arms to trot over to his food bowl, showing no indication whatsoever that he’d noticed Draco’s generosity of spirit._


	25. The Weakest Mink

“You could have told me about the ‘he never died’ thing” Hermione said crossly. Neville had caught up with her the next day in the library, where she was hiding behind a pile of advanced transfiguration texts. Draco was in her room; she could hardly look at the beloved animal without having a panic attack. She had no idea how she was going to undo a transfiguration more than a decade old, where the original caster was dead. Death tended to set a seal on spell work; it was how magical buildings stayed up for centuries and curses carried on through generations. Barty Crouch Junior had died some time after he’d been kissed by a dementor; the records that Hermione had been able to find had been a little vague, since he’d already ‘died’ a few times at that point.

Neville looked pained “I’m sorry, Hermione. I really did forget, and then when I finally remembered to ask Vy, I completely forgot to tell you. I- I knew that it was bothering you, and I forgot” He hung his head “I’m stupid”

“Oh- oh, Neville, no, that’s-“ Hermione flushed “That’s not what I meant. Honestly, you have no idea how much I wish I could forget- all sorts of things. Really”

“No matter how hard I try, I just always mess it up like this” Neville said with deep bitterness. He sat beside her at the table, putting his head in his hands. “This is why I never had any real friends- why even my gran and that kind of hated me”

“That’s not what I think!” Hermione shrilled, absolutely not able to cope with this change in him right now “God, Neville, at least you’ve done something with your life! You’re normally so happy and confidant! I only wish I was like that! The story of my entire life is that I herded a couple of mean, self-absorbed boys through their destiny like some bit player- ‘the brightest witch of her age’ my ass- and then burnt out and did absolutely bloody nothing. After all- those that can’t do, teach!”

Suddenly she realised what she implied. She opened her mouth to correct herself, but Neville had started laughing.

“You forgot to say that children are really awful” he said.

Hermione sagged in relief “They are, though! Beastly little plagiarists. I feel like I’ve marked the same essay a hundred times now”

“They don’t sterilise the shears when they make a cutting” Neville said “Filthy little creeps. Honestly, I think they should all be in Azkaban until they’re 21”

“You’re incorrigible” she laughed, rubbing her hair out of her face.

“S’why you like me” he said, squeezing her gently and tipping up the back cover of the book she’d been reading to look at the spine “You know you’re the Professor of Transfiguration, right? It doesn’t get much more advanced than that”

“I wish that were true” Hermione said, with feeling. She didn’t want to go to the Headmistress until she had at least a bit of an idea how to turn Draco back- she had no proof besides her instinct and the way she’d come to know the ferret over the past few months. She was afraid she would be dismissed- especially with all the rubbish at the memorial. Mad people frequently incorporated elements of reality in to their delusions, she knew. Her friends had been worried about her before- what if Minerva just assumed she’d finally cracked, rambling about a random stoat who may or may not have ‘never died’?

“Hermione?” Neville touched her arm softly, and she realised she’d tuned him out. He was looking at her in concern. “Are you alright?”

“I-“ she struggled against the urge to tell him the truth- after all, he knew Salazar-Draco, knew his particular, un-ferret-like intelligence. But did he, really? Draco Malfoy was definitely on the hearts and minds of the castle lately, but Neville hadn’t put two and two together himself “I fought with Harry and Ron. They... um... know about us”

“Oh” Neville was silent for a moment “Is that... OK?”

She hadn’t actually thought about it until he asked- she’d been too distracted. Now she was surprised to find that where there should have been a knot in her stomach, there was nothing. If she’d considered how being exposed as a ‘loose’ woman would make her feel, she would have expected unendurable shame. She thought she might have imagined what everyone had to say about it and despaired, flinching away from the old accusations that she used her status as a war hero to jump from one pureblood to another as if that was somehow intentional- or wrong. She frowned.

“It’s... something” she said, puzzled. She rubbed her chest, as if the absence of shame was something she could physically touch. Instead, she felt her steady heartbeat.

“We can stop” Neville said, putting his hand lightly over hers “I can tell the prophet I’m in love with Vy, let them draw their own conclusions-“

“Neville!” She said, shocked “I don’t want to stop! I don’t want you to- wait... /do you love Professor Augustus?”

“Yes” Neville said simply.

“But” Hermione said, alarmed “Then...?”

“I’ve loved him for ages, silly” Neville said “just like I love you. It’s not a big deal”

“It isn’t?” She asked, weak with relief.

“No!” Neville said cheerfully, curling his fingers with hers “You aren’t going anywhere, are you? Neither is Vy. I get to be in your lives, and sometimes I even get to make them better, right?”

“So much better” Hermione confirmed, a lump in her throat.

“That’s what I want! Not marriage and a white picket fence and a two-person cemetery plot.”

She leant over in her chair until her head was pressed against his chest. He draped his arms around her.

“How could I ever think for a second that I could be made ashamed of you?” She whispered softly “You’re cleverer than anyone I’ve ever met”

He laughed silently at that. “Only about this”

“The older I get, the more I think that this is the thing that really matters” she admitted, and for a minute she let herself just _be_.


	26. Resident Weasel

_The witch took him in again. She tried to put him to bed on a cat bed; he waited until she was asleep to slip under her covers, and, as soon as he did, she put her arms around him._

_In the mornings she brought him plates of (cooked) eggs, bacon, and toast._

“I’m sorry I fed you cat food” _she whispered meekly, the first time. He’d secretly been a bit disappointed- but he supposed wizards didn’t eat cat food. The eggs were acceptable- not as good without the crunch of shell- but the bacon was unpleasantly metallic. The toast stuck on his teeth, so he ended up just licking the buttery bits. The witch would eat a few pieces of bacon and watch him worriedly._

“Do you... remember much?” _She asked one morning. He would have rolled his eyes if he could- how was he supposed to answer her? And what did she mean- much of his wizarding life? Much of her escapades with the tattooed wizard? Much at all?_

“I wish... I had something to tell you. I don’t know what happened to... I don’t know what happened after you were changed. The wizard who changed you... tried to kill Harry. Do you remember Harry Potter?”

_How did it make sense that he was reminded of that berk before he even knew the name of his rescuer? He remembered hating Potter like he hated the thought of another male crossing his drags. He rubbed toast crumbs off his whiskers and tried not to get frustrated._

“He... the wizard who changed you, not Harry... He’s dead, now. He was kissed by a dementor...” _she sighed and rubbed her face_ “I’m sorry, Malfoy. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how much you understand, and I don’t know... I don’t know how to think about you, being...” _she shivered a bit_ “Being a... person. Trapped. You were a child when you were transfigured, and I don’t know if you’ll still be fourteen when the spell is undone. I don’t know how the spell has affected your mind, or your... maturity. I don’t know if you... being in the bath with me... or in my bed... was perverted of you, or of me”

_He put his small hands on hers, and looked up into her eyes. He didn’t know how to tell her it was neither; that he didn’t really know the answer, himself. The way he felt about her was... confusing. Far too complex for his ferret mind. The intricacies of their entanglement spanned at least two cultures; maybe more, if she was muggle-born and had their sensibilities. As much as he imagined her being a real, pureblood witch, he had no reason to assume it was true- she could be anyone._

_However, she was soft, and gentle, and playful. He loved her laughter and how lovingly she held him at night._

_She was_ his _anyone, and her birth couldn’t change that now._


	27. Otters, Pathos, Logos

She had to know, so, when the weekend came around, she left Hogwarts for Diagon Ally. Flourish and Blotts had an entire section devoted to the war; she looked particularly for the very books she tended to avoid, luridly embellished ‘true crime’ style thrillers packed with heavily annotated wizengamot trial transcripts and descriptions of horrifying murders.

Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had been amongst the most terrifying of the death eaters after the loss of their son, which they blamed, not on Barty Crouch Junior and Voldemort, but on Dumbledore, Hogwarts, and the Ministry of Magic. Lucius, attending the Triwizard tournament as a school trustee- despite the supposed death of his son- had carried out the plan (originally Crouch Junior’s) to switch the Triwizard Cup for a Portkey, and bring Harry to the graveyard where Voldemort was given a powerful new body. The Malfoy Estate had become a regular meeting place for the death eaters, and Voldemort had even stayed there for a while. Narcissa had assaulted Hermione when she and the boys had been caught by snatchers and taken to the estate; Lucius had shaken Luna by the hair, demanding the girl identify Harry, and Narcissa had carved “mudblood” into Hermione’s arm as her sister looked on and laughed. That had been one of the few times she’d seen them unmasked; now she read about their deeds and tried desperately not to relive them.

Both of the Malfoys had been sentenced to spend the rest of their days in Azkaban. Narcissa Malfoy was the more infamous of the pair- or the more “popular”, because, like her sister, she had been a beautiful and terrible young woman- and she had died first; she hung herself with her silk stockings the very first day of her sentence. Lucius Malfoy had died just a few weeks later; officially, the cause of his death was dehydration from a hunger strike that began when Narcissa died. Unofficially, the books were glad to tell her, he died of a broken heart.

The Malfoy estate was in ruins, said to be cursed; there was no Malfoy heir to claim it and the ancient grounds refused any pretenders. According to one or two of the books, it had disappeared, unplottable even to those who’d known it well. Another book claimed that the author had journeyed there and taken tea with the ghost of Narcissa Malfoy, who would haunt the grounds until the body of her son was buried in the family crypt.

It was ghoulish; Hermione pushed the books hastily back onto the shelves. She hated them; they were a defilement of what was tantamount (as far as she was concerned) to a sacred space.

She now knew all about the dark path the Malfoys had taken after they lost their beloved son, but she couldn’t banish from her mind the frequent owls that Malfoy had received from his mother; almost every day there were new sweets, letters, and small favours. She had attended his Quidditch matches and taken him shopping in Diagon Ally. Lucius had bought Draco new brooms (and hadn’t /that annoyed Harry and Ron!) and shown every sign of loving him wholly, even when he treated him strictly. Narcissa had been younger than Hermione was now when she’d given birth to Draco; he’d been her only child.

Were they genuine wizard supremacists, or had losing a child left them vulnerable to Voldemort’s manipulation? She couldn’t forgive them for the pain she’d suffered at their hands, but were they any less victims of the war than she was? When Narcissa had straddled her and branded her flesh, had she really despised Hermione’s muggle blood- or the very fact that Hermione had been alive and Draco had not?

When she changed Malfoy back, what life would he have to return to? A ruined estate and a ghoulish legacy as the son of two of the most demented Deatheaters? Would anyone in the wizarding world ever trust him? Harry and Ron certainly wouldn’t- Ron had made his feelings perfectly clear in her room when he thought he was merely speaking ill of the dead, and Harry would soon come around to Ron’s side- he’d always hated and suspected Malfoy, even before the war. His recent passion for Dumbledore and other people he’d historically doubted, like Severus Snape, seemed unlikely to extend to his schoolyard adversary who’d spent the war ‘safely’ tucked away as a ferret while his parents slaughtered muggles, half bloods, and good witches and wizards.

What’s more, Malfoy hadn’t completed school! If she managed to transfigure him back to his human body, would he be fourteen again? If Malfoy had aged as a ferret, he was positively elderly; it was hard to find well-sourced information about how long they lived, but the range seemed to be five to ten years; he’d certainly exceeded that. If he became an adult man, would he be in his nineties, without ever have completed his OWLs or NEWTs, without ever having had a job or a girlfriend or a human life?

As far as she could tell, this situation had never occurred before; she was quite literally the expert on the subject, having kept an Animagus trapped in her animal form for more than a week- something completely unheard of. Had Rita aged like her short-lived beetle form should have in that time? She’d wracked her brain and couldn’t remember seeing any indication thereof. Rita had been able to change back as soon as Hermione released her, but what had that actually meant? She had clearly understood enough in her beetle form to write articles out of the information she gathered, but since her articles had contained only the bare minimum of truth even when she had the luxury of spying, it was hard to know what she’d actually gleaned from it. Did she have no intelligence as a beetle, but perfect recollection of the sensory input she’d gotten afterwards?

Was Malfoy aware- say, as aware as a cat? His brain was the size of a peanut; he couldn’t possibly have full human awareness. Could he?

She longed to ask Minerva what her experience was of being a feline animagus, but she was afraid the topic might lead to ones she was less capable of handling. Sirius had remembered his time spent as Snuffles, and implied that he was fully cognisant in his dog form- but he’d also done ridiculously stupid things in that form, like stalked and terrified Harry when he had no ill will towards him, and dragged Ron so awkwardly he’d broken his leg. He’d hardly acted human when he was out of the dog form, either; eating rats, slurping the marrow out of cracked bones, and never brushing his hair. What part of his inhuman behaviour was due to his hideous experiences of incarceration, and what part the amount of time spent as an animal? An animal who, it must be said, had a much larger brain than a ferret, whether it acted like it or not.

And all of her thoughts of animagus were only barely relevant, because Malfoy was not one; he had been transfigured into a ferret by force, as much as if she’d transfigured a teacup into a newt. The newt would have as little control over its new state of being as Malfoy did, and no amount of believing that it was actually a teacup would save it; the very reason that animagus were so closely regulated by the ministry was that the process was lengthy and considered; practicing animagus spent much of their time learning what it was to be human specifically so that they could return from their animal forms.

Malfoy had no such preparation, and if at any stage reversing the spell on him took a contribution of _his_ willpower or self-image, she wasn’t sure at all that he had it.

It wasn’t natural to feel so defeated in a bookshop. Hermione leant against a shelf and wondered what to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some “AU” background! If you feel I’ve left out important details or missed something useful, write me in the comments and I might add or correct if I can- the story tag about my not having read the cannon for years is true, but I find that I tell myself “oh, I’ll reread the books before I write any fan fiction” and then I end up bogged down in details and never end up writing the fan fiction at all! I suspect that if you look too closely at my premise it falls apart all too easily.
> 
> In this aside, I just wanted to say that the comments, kudos, and tumblr notes really give me a heap of motivation to see this thing out. I am (ahead of what I’m posting) up to a tricky bit of the story- where good things start to happen, and, as I suggested I would in my first story note, I’m struggling a bit to write it. I’m a lot more familiar with the feelings of abandonment, isolation, and fear in this story than I am with any of the positive stuff that will resolve it. I really don’t have a lot of good things in my life, but your engagement with this story is definitely one thing amongst the few.
> 
> Edit: Thanks to a commenter for noticing that I accidentally called Sirius “Fluffy”, instead of “Snuffles” when Hermione was reminiscing on his antics in his dog form towards the end of this chapter! I’ve fixed that now, and I really appreciate the comments :)


	28. Understoatably

_He raised his head as he heard the lock on the door click softly over. It was early, but he didn’t know how early- the witch was still asleep, but that wasn’t much of an indication. Her sleep, like the rest of her schedule, was largely esoteric; she left and came back seemingly at whim, and it was hard to keep track of time while she was gone. She had liked to bathe, which had once given him some point of reference as to how many days were passing, but now she wasn’t letting him in the bathroom anymore, and he wasn’t sure what she was doing in there. There were many times when he thought she should have been eating or sleeping, when instead she read books and parchment._

_Crookshanks also raised his head curiously from the end of the bed as the door inched silently open._

_The tattooed wizard slipped into the room, and shut the door gently behind him. He carried a huge silver tray filled with food; this he set down in the kitchenette._

“Hey” _he whispered softly into the darkness of the room_ “Are you awake?”

“Mmfgh... I am now” _the witch mumbled sleepily_ “How’d you get in?”

“Keep your eyes closed” _the wizard whispered, hastily taking off his robes_ “I’m surprising you, but I didn’t want to, you know, startle you”

_The witch rubbed her face drowsily, keeping her eyes closed, but smiling deeply in the darkness. She absently reached for Draco where he lay draped over her neck and scratched his back so nicely that his foot twitched and thumped in pleasure._

“Okay! Open your eyes!” _the wizard said triumphantly, standing proudly by the head of the bed in all his glorious nakedness and holding out the huge tray_ “I’ve brought you breakfast in bed! You can start with what’s on the tray, or what’s under it” _he leered playfully._

“Oh, Neville, No!” _The witch shrieked in alarm, clapping her hand over Draco’s eyes. He heard the crash of the tray hitting the ground and food going everywhere as the wizard startled and dropped it; the temporary whisker-blindness in a moment of noise and action startled him too, and he leapt straight up into the air and twisted away from the witch, scuttling to Crookshank’s side at the foot of the bed as the witch bolted upright and clapped her hands over her mouth at the chaotic scene._

“Well, that could have gone better!” _The wizard tried to joke lamely._

“Put your robes back on!” _the witch shrilled._

_Draco would have been a lot more ticked off at her than the tattooed wizard- Neville?- was. As far as he could tell, she’d gone totally bonkers. Neville, however, grabbed his robes without question and hastily pulled them on._

“I’m really sorry” _he said grovelingly_ “I didn’t mean... I’m really sorry”

“Stop apologising!” _The witch cried out in frustration, looking around wildly- Draco realised she was looking for him, and ducked down even lower behind Crookshanks, slithering off the bed just as the cat did, and, when Crookshanks started helping himself to the milk spilt on the floor, seizing a couple of blueberries and a mouthful of a runny poached egg yolk for himself._

“I- I have no idea what’s going on here” _Neville said._

“Where’s Malfoy gone?” _The witch cried anxiously_ “you can’t just wave your dick around in front of him!”

“Malfoy?” _Neville asked blankly_ “Malfoy... what?”

_Then Crookshanks darted suddenly for a plate of kippers, and he was exposed; the wizard Neville spotted him, put two and two together, and fainted clean away._


	29. Professor Ermine

“I didn’t want to tell you, in case you thought I was mad” Hermione admitted “Only the spellwork to transfigure him back is a bit complicated, because if I’m wrong, and I go through with this, I might transfigure a perfectly ordinary stoat into a Malfoy, and that would be a disaster”

“Obviously” Neville said faintly. He was still having a bit of a reaction to the news that his most-feared childhood bully had been living in Hermione’s bedroom. She wasn’t sure he’d fully realised the implications and she wasn’t looking forward to when he did; she just didn’t have enough answers for him.

She nudged the glass of orange juice he’d brought for their breakfast closer to his hand, and he drank it obligingly.

“Thank you so much for... trying to surprise me. I’m sorry I overreacted”

“No, that’s fine” Neville said thinly “I guess I should be glad Malfoy’s never bitten me on the dick, considering he’s been here the whole time that we...” he trailed off.

“I don’t think he understands much” Hermione said hopelessly, ignoring the dirty look the ferret now shot her from where he was sharing kippers with Crookshanks “I was going to do the untransfiguration today, or at least make the first attempt at it”

“I’m guessing you haven’t told Mcgonagal?”

“I... didn’t want her to think I’d snapped” Hermione admitted.

“You don’t think it’s slightly more likely that she’d, knowing you, give you the benefit of the doubt and help you turn him back? Or hand him over to Saint Mungo’s because that is... you know, literally what they do there?”

She flushed with embarrassment. “Everything he’s been through, Neville, is all because of them. I mean, not them _personally_ , but, you know, this place, those people, the system- it didn’t exactly protect him when he was fourteen!”

“That’s a reasonable point... but it also sounds like a really convenient way to justify something you’re already doing for personal reasons” Neville said softly “If this, keeping him a secret from everyone is... just a way for you to feel like a hero again, standing up against the unfairness of the world...?”

Hermione was taken aback. She flushed with anger. That Harry might doubt her, or Ron, or Mcgonagall- that was a given. But Neville undermining her? _Neville_?

“What would you know? This is how you’ve always been” she said venomously “Too soft and trusting to realise how bad things are- and your answer is always just to run to your gran or the headmaster and cry about it, and then tell everyone that you were too stupid to know better!”

Neville softly set his glass down, his face very old and very sad “It’s actually harder than you think- to stay soft and trusting in a bad world, and give people the benefit of the doubt wherever possible. Calling me those things isn’t as much of an insult as you think it is”

Hermione was almost crying. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go- her cruel words, her devastating truths, those were her only defence when these men came for her, when they ripped her down with their careless, messy, violent tempers and their self-congratulatory anger. Reasonableness was her gift; the moral high ground was all she had. She couldn’t fight with someone who refused to get angry, because she needed to be right, but she was only right if they were wrong, irrational, emotional and violent. She let out a small sob.

“Hey, look...” Neville said awkwardly “I’d really like to- to be here for you right now. But this isn’t healthy. I can’t just sit here absorbing your contempt or- ...whatever this is. Maybe you really feel these things about me, or maybe you’re just afraid to... really look at your motives- because they’d be less noble than you think.” He rubbed his face “I really care about you, and I know you’re in pain. I’ll be around, when you’re ready to... just, I don’t know, have some emotional honesty or intellectual integrity, or, something, about this”

He started for the door.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Hermione shrilled. He didn’t stop. “Don’t you _dare_ tell anyone about this, Neville Longbottom!” She menaced pointlessly. He just left, closing the door softly behind him.

“I _don’t_ want to be a hero again” she said emptily, clenching her fists.

She was teeming with emotion as she set up for the spell, ruthlessly flicking her wand and stacking or banishing her furniture so that she had a clear space to work. Crookshanks and Draco seemed frightened of her; they hid in the doorway of the bathroom and watched her warily as she stomped about.

If she could manage all the spellwork before Neville ratted her out, it would all be a moot point; she’d prove that she’d been completely capable of doing it all along and that she didn’t need the help that she refused to ask for. She locked and warded the door well, and added a soundproofing ward, just in case.

And who was Neville to question her like that, anyway? She hadn’t asked him for his opinion- he couldn’t transfigure so much as a door mouse into a doorknob and she didn’t need an encyclopaedic recognition of European mosses to untransfigure Malfoy.

She caught up the squirming animal a little harder than she’d intended, plonking him in the middle of the room.

“Stay there, Malfoy” She said firmly “I’m going to try to change you back, and it helps if you don’t wriggle”

If it was possible for a Ferret to look apprehensive, he did; she rolled up the sleeves of her nightshirt and bunched her hair into a knot to keep it out of the way. She took a deep breath and cleared her thoughts, shedding the extraneous emotion that would interfere with her careful casting. This was easy; she had, after all, plenty of practice. She was always happiest when she was casting, when she could banish the clawing animal of self-doubt and anxiety, when she could forget her failures and frailties and alter the most fundamental aspects of being; after all, if she could change one thing to another entirely, was it so unlikely that one day she’d be able to change herself into someone that was happy, and kind, and maybe even loveable?

And there, as she let the weight of her thoughts lift from her shoulders, was clarity. She balanced her wand in her hand, released a cleansing breath, and closed her eyes. The spell spilt effortlessly from her heart to her wand; there was a light so bright that it shone pinkly through her eyelids, a keening groan, neither animal nor human. She was replete with the kind of wild, bubbly ecstasy that accompanied knowing you’d done something perfectly even before you saw the result- bowling a strike and being sure of it the second that the ball left your fingertips-

Eagerly, she opened her eyes.


	30. Third Intermission




	31. Weasel Words

_When Draco was small, he’d often watched his mother dress for the parties and dinners she would attend with his father. It was a good opportunity to eat candy from the frilled ceramic pot that she kept in her “powder room” and also to watch her perform the esoteric functions of extremely beautiful people. Usually the elves would lay out her outfit while she attended her toilette, and this frequently gave Draco the opportunity, once they were gone and before his mother emerged, to sneak over and touch the bejewelled, silken dress robes in their gorgeous, wine-dark hues._

_One day, as he was examining a robe, he realised that there was something quite wrong with it, and, fancying that he’d probably get a special treat for noting the ineptitude of the house elves, when his mother emerged he sang triumphantly;_

_‘Maman! Look! The house elves have left you only bits of a robe!’_

_‘How observant you are, my little princeling’ his mother had crooned softly. She wore a shimmering crimson under-robe in a gauze so fine it could only be spider silk._

_‘I’ll punish those bad elves for you, Maman!’ He said proudly, and for a moment she said nothing, only pushed the little sweetie-jar closer to him so that he didn’t have to lean quite so far over from the upholstered stool to reach it._

_‘This robe is special, my darling, just like you’ she said, when he had an apple toffee in his mouth and he was too busy chewing to reply._

_‘There are very few ways to distinguish yourself wearing a robe, no matter how fine, that have not been thoroughly explored by witches much cleverer than myself. A wizard can have his robes tailored, just as your father does and you one day will, but a witch is best prepared with a tricky little spell to accomplish what no hidden pleat or button can, my love’_

_‘I don’t understand, Mother’ he felt sure he was being told a very grown-up sort of secret- perfect for a worldly boy of four and three months, but heretofore inappropriate._

_‘With just the right wand movement, my sweetling, I join these robe pieces together, fit to my figure, perfect and seamless, and the finished robe can only be removed with a counter charm’_

_This, at the time, seemed precarious to his mind; what if she needed to use the loo? He didn’t dare ask; it was always possible that mothers did not need to use the loo and he’d look silly not realising that already. He simply nodded, and watched as his mother used her wand to drape the half-robe, and another half-robe, and, quite honestly, a few more halves after that, and sewed them magically to her slim form until it was honestly very hard to see where she ended and the robe began; she might have been just one, swirling, magical creature, ensconced in flesh the colour of flame._

_He thought this was what that must have been like for her then, this sense of being helplessly, hopelessly trammeled in seamless fabric, so close that it might as well be skin. He tried to find the ends where he began, and there were none. He was all of this and none of it at the same time. Everything he touched was wrong and the way he touched it was wrong. He couldn’t find the shape of himself in the body he’d become- he didn’t have to look at himself to know that it wasn’t right, in the same way he didn’t have to thrust his hand in a fire to know that it was hot. The deep disgust and disorientation he felt existed entirely independently of any awareness of what he looked like to others- the untransfiguration had gone wrong, and he knew it with a certainty that he felt in his bones._

_All he could do with the tangled mess of limbs and flesh he had become was scream._


	32. Polecat Got Your Tongue

Shouting at him was no use; he was yelling- keening, really- louder than she could possibly raise her voice without magic. She’d tried shaking him too, but, curled over on his knees with his face in his hands, he was utterly impervious, and when she shoved his muscular shoulder as hard as was physically possible, she saw blood curling down his hands from where he seemed determined to tear his face off with his fingernails. She lost her head a little bit then; his shrieking was horrifying and she wasn’t all that good with blood anymore. She poked her wand against his butt and gave him a small jolt of magic.

His feral screaming tapered off abruptly to a whimper. He shot her a wild-eyed look, his movements jerky and exaggerated, and then, suddenly, he seemed to really register her presence.

To be fair, she could rationalise, he only did what he’d been doing for months at that point. Unfortunately, all the times he’d previously vaulted into her arms, he’d been approximately a foot and a half long and weighed about four pounds; now he was substantially larger than that, and it felt a little like she’d been tackled by a rugby player.

Her concerns that untranfiguring Malfoy may leave him fourteen- or, worse, a hundred and two- had not come in to fruition. If she’d had to guess, she’d have placed him as about the same age as she was. Unfortunately, being a ferret for so long appeared to have had a substantial impact on his body- namely that he was _fit_. He was taller than her (everyone was) but also substantially wider, with the sort of muscular arms, barrel chest, and six-pack-on-his-six-pack stomach that she would normally associate with people who spent most of their lives chasing some sort of ball up and down a patch of grass. He had about as many scars as if he’d been run over by a lawn mower, but the way they’d healed against his ethereally-fair skin, combined with his white hair and thick white lashes, gave him a silvery, fae look- if it was actually possible for one to look simultaneously fae, and enthusiastically murderous.

She was pretty sure she’d cracked a rib when he jumped on her; she groaned in pain as he nuzzled her neck and cheek, and panted anxiously into her ear. He hadn’t seemed to realise that he was squashing her, and she struggled to catch enough breath to say “Malfoy, get off me!”

He scuttled away like she’d smacked him, and she eased herself up.

“Are you okay? Can you talk? It worked, Malfoy! You’re human again!” She enthused weakly “Do you understand?”

He groaned, and rasped, and then coughed out “Not... worked”. She was startled and delighted to hear his voice; he obviously didn’t quite have a grasp of how to speak in time with his breathing, but if he was talking, he was comprehending, to one degree or another!

“What do you mean?” She asked “You look perfect- you haven’t even got a tail- and I can see all of you, so I can tell”

He stared in frustration at her, then at his hands, curled on the stone floor, and still bloodied.

“I don’t know if you remember me at all-“ She started awkwardly, and he gave a short cough, and then nodded hard. “You... do? Remember me?”

He nodded again. He was hunched over, crouched on his toes and knuckles, and he kept having violent fits of shivering.

“Are you in pain? Are- are you cold?” she asked in concern, and then she had an idea “I know!” She flinched as the pain in her rib flared “Why don’t I run you a bath? Do you want a bath? That always helps me feel human”

He blinked at her in evident confusion. She tried to think of another way to say it, and then decided that even dogs and children knew ‘do you want a bath’, and there wasn’t really a simpler way to say it. Instead, she went to the bathroom door and opened it, then, at a loss when he didn’t bound over like he used to, she made a hopeless sort of fluttering gesture. Crookshanks was interested at this point; he padded over to her with his tail in the air, making the small burbling meow that Hermione always took to mean ‘oh, were you talking to me?’

“Malfoy, come on, come here” she said, and she was satisfied when the man hesitantly started to sidle towards her. He hadn’t quite figured out how to move yet, either, but honestly that was fine; if he’d come back all polished and irritable, with a bone to pick about her feeding him cat food or keeping him in a birdcage, she probably would have transfigured him back into a ferret.

She ran him a bath while he crouched by her towel rail, rubbing his face against the cotton, and, after she’d established through pidgin English and pantomime that the bath was, in fact, for him, and she hadn’t been overtaken by a sudden irresistible urge to bathe herself in the middle of rehabilitating him, and, additionally, that once he was in the bath she was not planning on joining him, the hot water did seem to calm him down. Once he’d settled, he sat touching himself in the shocked, shameless manner of a small child, playing with his toes and poking his fingers into his belly button. His white hair was longish and dirty; she was careful not to think too much about what she was doing as she cupped water through it with her fingers and squished in shampoo; he’d fallen quite still and was almost purring.

She was relieved that he relaxed enough to look at her and smile; and then she turned away for half a second to conjure him a towel and some knickers, and by the time she looked back, he was fast asleep.


	33. Chutney Ferret

_He’d ended up sleeping for ages. The witch had tried to wake him to shift him to the bed, and then again later, to tell him she was leaving for work. Both times he’d found himself too exhausted to respond, falling instantly back to sleep. Now, when he woke, there were two plates of cold food next to the bed; a breakfast-looking pile of bacon, sausages, eggs, fried potatoes and tomatoes, and toast, and a lunch plate of sandwiches packed with roast beef and horseradish. He scarfed everything meaty, and then, still hungry, he ate all the other stuff too, and licked the plates. He still felt like he could eat a whole rabbit; he licked grease off his fingers and face and sat quietly for a while, his thoughts sluggish._

_The witch had slept on her love seat; there were a pile of blankets strewn there still. It was strange- they’d been sleeping together for months now. She’d left him a pile of clothes, and he examined them for a while without making any decisions about them; he walked around the room for a while, stretching, and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. He found it creepy and moved away quickly. He still didn’t look right; his body was stretched, disproportionate, heavy on top and too skinny all over. He had no fur and no claws. If he was ever attacked by a badger, he’d be mince meat._

_He touched the witch’s books. She had no decorations, hardly any furniture; her room was so spartan it was almost a cell. He felt like it had been a hundred years since he’d seen something beautiful, and his eyes ached for it; the witch didn’t own a single splendid robe, or tapestry, or even a jewellery box. It bordered on unfathomable._

Now someone was outside the door; he crept over there, alert. There was a soft noise, and then a corner of a purple parchment envelope poked under the door. He grabbed the handle and flung the door open, grabbing the startled wizard beyond and dragging him inside. It was pleasing to throw him back against the door, slamming it shut; he was much bigger and stronger than the other wizard, and that satisfied him.

“Merlin’s feet!” The wizard said, throwing his hands up between their bodies and pressing them to his bare chest, then he stared at Draco and blushed very badly “So” he squeaked, looking down at the ground, up at the ceiling, anywhere but Draco “The spell worked”

“Did it?” Draco growled “I look normal?”

The wizard hummed in agreement, still not looking at him, and Draco grabbed his face and dragged it down “Look!” He commanded “I need to know before my mate returns”

The wizard seemed unable to produce any words other than ‘merlin!’, which he repeated while Draco stared at him impatiently.

“What is wrong with you?” He finally burst out, exasperated “You know me, Neville”

“You know my name” Neville looked like he was going to swoon; Draco put a palm on his chest to hold him up against the door, in case he fainted.

“What is wrong with you?” He repeated.

“I am literally being thrown around by a big muscly naked guy” Neville said weakly “I’ve been fantasising about this since Gregory Goyle kicked me in the crotch in fifth year”

“Well, stop it” Draco said, confused “I’m menacing you”

“I noticed” Neville said “believe me”

“Tell me if I look normal” Draco growled.

“You look great!” Neville said quickly “Excellent. No further examination required”

“The witch will find me appealing like this?” He pressed “I plan to make her my mate”

“Do you mean Hermione?” Neville asked cautiously.

“No” Draco said blankly “Why would I?”

“I don’t know which witch you mean, if it’s not Hermione” Neville said. Draco absently scrunched a hand in his robes, enjoying the feeling of fabric and skin; it reminded him of grooming someone’s fur. Neville seemed to find it soothing as well; he stayed very, very still.

“The witch who changed me back. The witch who has been caring for me. Your mate” he said carefully.

“That’s Hermione Granger” Neville confirmed “You used to bully her. You used to bully a lot of people, honestly”

“I know that” Draco lied irritably “but if you didn’t like being bullied, you wouldn’t be so aroused”

Neville blushed “You’re _‘aroused’_ too” he said defensively.

“Of course I am. I’m winning” Draco said dismissively.

“Merlin! How do you sound exactly the same and completely different at the same time?”

“Do you want to play with me?” Draco asked curiously.

“Not right now” Neville said a bit faintly.

“Do wizards do that? With each other?” Draco asked interestedly.

“Some do” Neville admitted “I do. But not... um...”

“I don’t remember that” Draco admitted, “Do you kiss?”

“Can we... just sit down? I don’t know how to have this conversation while you’re pinning me against the door”

“Can I see your tattoos?” Draco ran his hands inside Neville’s robes.

“Woah!” Neville yelled, trying to squirm away. Draco leant over and kissed him, interested to know if he’d enjoy it. The other wizard froze, and then, after a second, started to kiss him back, and he definitely liked it- it would be even better with Hermione, he decided. He pulled away, bounded over to the love seat, and looked impatiently at Neville.

Finally Neville drew himself upright and walked unsteadily over to sit on an end-table next to the love seat. He was as pale as an owl.

“Malfoy, don’t kiss Hermione like that, okay?” He said finally.

“I will if I choose to” Draco said, annoyed “She’s my mate now”

“I don’t think she’ll see it that way” Neville said “Uh... Human mating rituals are a little more elaborate than just throwing someone down and shagging them”

“If I threw you down and shagged you right now, wouldn’t you be my mate?” Draco sneered.

“Alright, I have some stuff going on” Neville said quickly “We’ve established that. But Hermione gets muddled between whether she wants to do something or whether she has to, and she has to be treated with respect to her boundaries and kindness”

“I will treasure her” Draco said impatiently.

“Are you going to listen to me, or not?” Neville rebuked “Because _I’m_ already in a relationship with Hermione, so I probably know how to do it, hm?”

“I will listen to you” Draco scowled “but first, show me your tattoos”

The wizard continued to hesitate for a long moment; Draco was starting to get a little bored with all his carrying on.

“This is a very weird day for me” Neville said, and started to take his robes off.


	34. Minkie Pankie

It was a bad time to be distracted in class; it was almost exam time, and her students were asking questions that she reasonably should have been able to answer articulately. Many had been the times Hermione felt insufficient to discharge her duties as a Professor, but being distracted by the thought of a man in her room was by far the most embarrassing.

Once Malfoy was awake and dressed, she would be able to tell Mcgonagal what had happened and she’d be free; but it wasn’t fair to spring the wider world on Malfoy while he was still naked and disoriented. Her presence seemed to go some way to soothing him; she tried not to think of how his attachment to her suggested that he remembered at least some of his time as a ferret, probably including some things she’d rather he didn’t.

She regathered her scattered thoughts, hesitating outside her own door. She realised that she was smoothing her rumpled robes and had to force herself to stop. He had said he remembered her, but did he know that she remembered him? And not exactly fondly? Was he embarrassed about the way he used to pester her, now that she’d healed him? Is that what she wanted?

Did she expect him to apologise for things he’d done when he was just a child?

Oh, god, how was she going to tell him his parents were dead? How was she going to tell him anything about the long years he’d missed? An entire war had come and gone, leaving the very things he had been taught as a child very firmly in the realm of the unacceptable. She could barely think about those years, either, let alone speak of them!

Neville had been right; getting Malfoy to Mcgonagal or Saint Mungo’s would have made more sense than trying to do this on her own. Hermione was woefully unprepared to face the past that Malfoy had essentially missed out on (for better or worse). Crookshanks biting him had not made Malfoy her personal responsibility- but had she done so by changing him back?

She pushed the door open and stepped in to her room, and stared. The room was lit by dozens of flickering candles. Her narrow, utilitarian cot had been replaced with a brass framed double bed with a silken coverlet in a deep purple, which somehow already had a patch of cat fur at the foot, even though Crookshanks had been with her all day. Her love seat was the same, but now there were cushions on it. A tapestry- a recreation of the ‘Taste’ panel of ‘The Lady and the Unicorn’- hung from the wall, and her bookshelves had been tidied and organised. Several jewelled candelabras decorated the room, catching the candlelight and sending flickering coloured visions dancing. There were beautiful pots and vases overflowing with fresh flowers- zinnia and sunflowers and poppies, masses of brightness and colour. The previously bare, slightly dusty stone floor was now spread with a luxuriously beautiful persian rug, patterned with dancing, brightly plumed manticore.

Malfoy lay reclined roguishly on the floor, propped up on a pile of cushions. He was naked, but his longish hair was combed back away from his angular face. He had a bottle of wine and two glasses by his elbow, and was casually holding a book, which Hermione was sure was merely a prop; the deep sapphire cover was very becoming against his silvery skin, but it was a slightly loopy transfiguration textbook by an Australian wizard who believed that dolphins and whales were the first wizards, and all magical bloodlines were distantly related to them.

“What have you done to my room?” Hermione asked in astonishment.

“Does it please you, my treasure?” Malfoy asked smugly.

“Did you steal these things? Where on each did they come from?!” Hermione shut and locked the door hastily behind her, before anyone walked past.

“I did not steal” Malfoy said lazily “But I would have, for you”

“I don’t want you to steal-“ Hermione started, in confusion. Crookshanks was rubbing happily against her legs, waiting for his afternoon tea.

“Ugh- how do you sound exactly as arrogant as you did when you were fourteen? Malfoy, you have to take these things back to where ever you got them” Hermione said, taking the canister of dry cat food out of it’s cupboard in the kitchenette (and noticing as she did so that there were a whole lot of candies, fruits, wines, and chocolates in the cupboard that hadn’t been there earlier in the day). She poured out a rattling, unmeasured amount of biscuits into the pretty blue crockery that had replaced Crookshank’s old steel bowl.

“You deserve only the finest things” Malfoy said haughtily “This is only the beginning”

“Malfoy, I have- I have no idea what you’re talking about” Hermione said firmly “You don’t owe me anything for changing you back, and I don’t... I don’t want these things!”

Malfoy was up in an instant, faster than she could follow his movement; he stalked over to her, staring directly into her eyes. He was beautiful, absolutely, undeniably beautiful, in his nakedness. Her butt bumped the counter as she backed away.

“Tell me what you want” he said, his voice almost a growl. He took her jaw gently in his hand, his nails teasing lightly at her skin “And I will give you that”

Hermione gulped, clutching the canister of cat food defensively.

“You... You have to go” she said weakly, unable to tear her eyes from his, flinty blue and absolutely unhesitant.

“Go? Where?” He seemed genuinely surprised, even hurt.

“Back to- to Malfoy Manor. To your life. Your wizard life. Did you think that... when I changed you back... you would just stay here, at hogwarts?”

“I see...” he said softly “Your desire is to cast me aside, again”

“No!” Hermione countered shrilly “No, it’s not... Don’t manipulate me!”

“I’m not manipulating you. I am declaring my love, and you’re turning me away”

“I’m not turning you away! I don’t- this isn’t- Love? Honestly!”

“If you only want to banish me again” Malfoy said softly “Let me stay for a little longer yet. Let me get my wits about me...” he reached into the opened canister in her arms, selected a couple of pieces of kibble, and tossed them into his beautiful, sneering mouth, crunching them decisively.

“Teach me, Professor”


	35. The End Of An Tayra

“It’s useless. She doesn’t want me” He was laying on the bed. In the end, Hermione had not told anyone that he was in her room, nor removed any of the gifts he’d had the house-elves gather for her, but she had not yet bowed to his seduction, either.

“It’s more complicated than that, Malfoy, and you know it” Hermione said absently. She was ‘helping’ Neville mark his student’s exam papers; he had long since forgotten to do anything of the sort himself, distracted by watching Draco. If Hermione had found him even half as enchanting as Neville did, she’d never be able to drag herself off of his cock. Draco was certain that if he’d commanded it, Neville would eat out of his hand.

As a result, Draco didn’t mind having Neville around, even though Hermione and he were still theoretically in a relationship; they’d made up in front of him by the rapid exchange of a half-dozen hastily written letters and lots of awkward looks at him. Neville’s admiration was reassuring; Draco still wasn’t sure his body looked right, although he was starting to get used to it.

“Neville” Draco prompted, and the wizard blinked, met his eye, and blushed.

“Sorry, what?” Neville asked “I was... um... reading this essay”

“It doesn’t matter, he’s being a sook” Hermione said ruthlessly. Draco was actually starting to enjoy that; she was so funny when she was being tough.

“I’ve been completely honest and up front with her” Draco complained “and it doesn’t matter. She treats me like I’m not capable of making my own decisions”

“You can’t have it both ways” Neville pointed out “You can’t be too weak and uncertain to leave her room, and fully capable of making an emotional commitment to her”

“Exactly” Hermione said firmly.

“You’re supposed to be on my side!” Draco whined, throwing himself down to the foot of the bed and cuddling Crookshanks. Now that he had long, wiggly fingers, he was able to repay Crookshanks with many hours of scritching; as well as all the treats he snuck to the elderly cat while Hermione wasn’t looking. Sometimes Crookshanks had started to stay in the room with Draco during the day, instead of following at Hermione’s heel. It was just one more proof, in Draco’s mind, that Hermione should love him. It had only served to make Hermione suspicious, and she’d started checking the pockets of Malfoy’s harem pants for treats.

Because she made him wear pants; that was her absolute rule. If he wanted to stay, he had to have something on. They’d spent hours trying to figure out something that he could wear without feeling like tearing off his own skin, and the harem pants were it; the light, slightly stretchy material (that Hermione called jersey), the drop crotch, and the sleekly tapered legs were almost comfortable. It made him feel more balanced, too; the shape evened out his broad shoulders and strange, scrawny legs.

“No one is on your side” Hermione said “Because we don’t have sides. Come on, Neville”

“Huh?” Neville said, distractedly. Hermione glared at him.

“We’re going down to dinner” Hermione said sternly “It’s almost the holidays. We’ve got to be consistent for the students”

Neville smiled embarrassedly, gathering up an armful of parchments and following her to the door.

“I’ll pine for you” Draco called teasingly, but he sighed into Crookshank’s fur as soon as the door was closed. He knew that Hermione was attracted to him, even that she cared for him; but she seemed afraid to get close to him and it depressed him almost as badly as wearing pants.

When she came in at almost midnight, she fell into bed in her clothes. Draco watched her from the couch, where he hadn’t been getting much sleep, but she didn’t stir again. He stayed quiet for an hour or so, and then slipped over to the bed, creeping onto the blanket next to her.

“Malfoy, no” She said firmly. He froze, and then slipped down onto the floor on his knees, pressing his face into the blankets, which smelt of her.

“Please?” He whispered, his voice sounding more hoarse than he’d intended “Hermione... I don’t want to be a wizard if it means that I can’t be with you anymore. I’d rather you changed me back than that I lose you”

She lay quite still. He touched her back, and she rolled over quickly, her face shiny with tears.

“I don’t know how you can decide that, after everything you’ve been through” she said desperately “I don’t want to... I’m not the right person for you, I’m just all you’ve got. I don’t want... to be your only option”

Draco climbed into bed with her and scooped her into his arms, holding her. She relented, pressing her face into his chest.

“I want you” he said, baffled “Just you. For the rest of my life. How could I not?”

She cried harder; her tears were ticklish on his skin. He tucked her under his chin, pressed his nose into her hair, with the smells of the greenhouse still trapped in it, and rubbed her back. Touching her again felt like a gift; how could she not understand the way he felt?

She was exhausted; soon, she’d cried herself out, and he nudged her sleepy face away from his chest so that he could wash away the salty tracks of tears, and kiss softly where they’d been. He took her boots off, and emptied her pockets of the books, wand, and bits and pieces that she carried everywhere. She was as thin as a bird, despite everything he and Neville did to encourage her to eat. He nudged the robe off her shoulders and fumbled for a bit with the zipper of her muggle jeans, then gave up and tucked her under the covers. As he went to return to the couch, she whispered, like a sigh,

“Draco, come here”

And he didn’t need more of an invitation than that; he jumped into bed behind her, catching her frail little body up in his arms so that he could hold her the way she’d once held him.

They didn’t get up the next morning; there was no need. Classes were over, the school year had finished, and besides, if she’d tried to wriggle away from him, Draco had decided he would have bitten her. At first they just cuddled, snuggled together again at last, but then Hermione kicked her way out of her jeans, and he suddenly had access to rather more bare skin than he had before.

“Your feet are cold” he complained, catching her legs between his to press as much of her chilled skin to his as possible “You’re wearing socks and your feet are like ice?”

“I’m a bit run down this term” she admitted, pressing her frozen little nose into his neck, so that her words whispered over his skin. Was it the shape of something that she was trying to say, or had she kissed him? He shivered with pleasure, pressed his fingers into the small of her back. She turned her face dreamily up to his, and he unthinkingly kissed her.

It was like sparking a wand; she pushed her fingers up, into his hair, and pulled it, pressing her whole body up against his, and she was so delicate but also so wild; she would have made a good ermine. He wanted to bite her neck and take her; he pinched and rolled her nipples roughly in his fingers and she gasped and crooned into his mouth. He knew he was supposed to pace himself, slowly, carefully, he couldn’t risk rushing her into something she would regret, but before he even realised it, he was hard, and grinding against her, and she’d hooked her legs around his waist, so that it was just the thin, stretchy material of his pants and her knickers that separated them- and then her deftly working fingers, oh!

He kissed her hungrily, his thoughts all tangled up in the taste of her, the play of her nails over his neck, her fast, hungry breathing, almost a growl- and now he was tangled in his pants and he mewled in annoyance and desperation, and she slapped his chest and it took him a second to realise it wasn’t just play-

“I need my wand” she said, trying to wriggle out from under him. He was so completely addled it took all he had not to stop her;

“What for?” He managed.

“Oh, god, Malfoy” she gasped irritably “I’ll tell you another time” She had squirmed her entire torso off the bed; Draco looked happily at her ass as she patted around amongst the scattered books and parchments for her wand. He kissed her upper thigh and then lightly bit her ass; she squirmed in a most delightful way and laughed, and he busied himself kissing and biting and sucking on her sweet flesh-

Then the door burst open.

“Surprise!” Harry Potter, Ron, Ginny Weasley, and a random blue-haired child, bellowed as loud as possible, leaping into the room “Happy End of Term and Early Birthday!”

Hermione shrieked and grabbed wildly for the blanket, sliding the rest of the way out of bed with it wrapped around her. Draco puffed up and hissed, completely forgetting he didn’t have any fur to puff anymore.

The two groups stared at each other, taken aback, while the candles on the pretty chocolate cake the intruders held before them flickered down, and died.

“Cor!” Ginny burst out “It’s Draco _Bloody_ Malfoy!”


	36. Pine (Marten)

Hermione had no doubts in her mind who went to Skeeter. Since the entire magical world fancied that one day she and Ron would get back together, her ‘carrying on’ with ‘the missing Malfoy’ gave Ron the opportunity to be the wronged one. Had he thought about it for even a minute before he’d done it? Had he considered the outcry against Hogwarts and the Ministry for their parts in the long-ago cover up? Had he worried that Hermione might lose her job? Had he cared how Malfoy, disoriented and family-less, might cope with being thrown into the spotlight?

Pansy Parkinson was a magi-estate law specialist. She’d picked up trusteeship of the Malfoy estate out of sentiment, and because no one else wanted it (there were plenty of less ghoulish estates that had to be sorted after the war ended). Now she’d found herself in the unenviable position of being guardian not just of the Malfoy estate, but it’s heir; she had arrived at Hogwarts less than an hour after Harry, Teddy, and the others had left. She wore business robes in a cut so severe and elegant, Hermione thought she must have transfigured her body to get them to fit, and a pair of spiked dragon skin heels that could very reasonably have been used to murder someone. She treated Hermione exactly as if the other woman was a particularly disgusting ‘binky’ being clutched by a recalcitrant child- that is to say, she ignored her completely- and she took Draco by the hand with such sure, deliberate reasonableness that he was helpless to resist.

Of course, they couldn’t force him to leave; or, more specifically, they couldn’t force him to leave her bedroom. Mcgonagall probably would have let him stay for a little longer, provided it didn’t become more fuel for the scandal, but that wasn’t too be. Hermione quit. Mcgonagall had a lot to say, but at the end of the day, it was meaningless; Hermione was so mortified, she would have been perfectly happy to be turned into a ferret and set loose on the grounds herself. The little flat she’d lived in before taking the job at Hogwarts had been filled; she rented a room above the leaky cauldron, begged Hannah Abbot not to tell anyone she was there, and affected, to the best of her abilities, her own disappearance.

Owls arrived almost hourly; hogwarts owls from Neville, Mcgonagal, and even, to her bafflement, from Neville’s boyfriend, Professor Augustus; owls from wizardly publications, including a particularly insistent owl with pink-dyed feathers and what looked like mascara on, from Witch Weekly; owls from people she didn’t know who had an opinion on her life, and who, unsurprisingly, often delivered howlers. She let Crookshanks chase the owls when they tried to wait for a reply, and let the commentary pile up in the corner, unattended.

She wasn’t sure she’d made a single clever decision since she was sixteen; it felt like a rather long time to be unintentionally stupid; how did people manage to do it for their whole lives? It was actually difficult for her to pick out how, at any particular time, she had made such foolish choices; here was a wounded animal, which she could have given to Hagrid, but instead befriended herself; here was her releasing that animal back into the ‘wild’- supposedly his ‘home- and wounding his already wounded trust; here was her realising that the animal wasn’t, in fact, an animal, and— she went over it, again and again, and it answered absolutely nothing.

When she was stressed, she forgot to eat. It had been a bad term for that, and she often felt dizzy when she stood up for too long. She kept the room like a hothouse, which she told herself was for Crookshank’s old bones, but it wasn’t, not really. Hannah would have fed her- she’d offered- but the stress of even opening the door was too much to contemplate. She wondered sometimes if it was possible to eat so little that you could just disappear completely?

A particular owl started to bring her meals; these were sweet, buttery, irresistible foods, mouth-wateringly soft and delicious, like chocolate biscuits, soft loaves of fresh bread stuffed with fruit or cheese and chives, and flasks of hearty soup. Once, there was an entire picnic basket, carried by four owls, packed with cured meats, olives, pickles, and artichoke hearts in oil; bread and crackers, and a dazzling array of cheeses, fruits, and chocolates. She alternated sips of the muggle champagne and hot chocolate in the accompanying flasks, and scritched an enormous Australian owl who only very haughtily kept company with the great horned owls nearby.

She missed Malfoy; actually, she missed Neville as well, and the way the three of them had been, for a while, companionable and funny and glib; both of them had a way of speaking to her, being with her, that it was strange to reminisce on. It had been like they were always looking at her, listening to her. Like they had wanted to impress her with their jokes and their cleverness. As if they cared about her opinion. If she was reading, they wanted to know what she thought of the book- and not just whether she was enjoying it or not (although they did want to know that), but what she actually thought of it, whether it was well-written or moving or informative, whether the prose was accessible or elusive. Neville wanted to know the names her parents had called her when she was little, or how she would visualise their mannerisms at night, before she fell asleep, so that she’d never fully forget them. Malfoy wanted to know what they smelled like; what her home smelt like; what was her favourite smell, texture, could she feel things with her hair, and was it a different sensation if she felt a fabric with her hands or with her feet?

They’d acted as if knowing her were a pleasure; as if these small insights into her life brought them enormous joy.

How could she have been so pathetic? How could she have thought that the life they were finding with each other- the teasing, the cuddles, the respect and admiration- was a whole life? _Better_ than a whole life? For the first time since the war she’d been filled up, brimming, overflowing with laughter, and, yes... love. She wanted to pretend that no one was suffering for it, that these stolen moments could last without anyone being the worse for it.

She’d been so utterly wrong.


	37. Skullduggery Ferret

“You’d be out of here a lot faster if you’d stop biting the staff” Pansy said flatly, looking for her underwear. She wouldn’t find them; he’d ripped the insubstantial lace when he yanked them off, and he’d hidden them in his pillowcase.

“That’s just my sexy, animalistic temperament” he said dryly “You wouldn’t want me to stop that, surely?”

“I mean it, Draco” Pansy sighed in annoyance “You think I want to spend my afternoons fucking your brains out in a hospital bed? We should be back at the manor, reclaiming it from the damn countryside”

Draco just looked at her, watching the sleek, curving legs disappearing into silky grey stockings, the plump, popped curve of her ass as she did up the fastening of her demi-corset.

“You like that?” Pansy asked seductively.

“I thought I told you not to wear stockings” he said bitchily “They remind me of my sainted mother’s terrible death”

Pansy rolled her eyes “I’m just going to tell them to put a muzzle on you”

“Get me out of here, Pans” he said “I’m a full grown wizard. I think I’ve more than proven that”

“Try to go a week without biting anyone” Pansy said huskily, leaning over to kiss him (and ignoring when he flinched away) “Except maybe me”

His first visitor at the manor was Neville. His boyfriend skulked further down the drive, keeping a wary eye out for feral peacocks.

“There’s all this rubbish in witch weekly about how Hermione kept you as a sex slave” Neville held up the magazine.

“That’s not fair!- we didn’t even have sex”

“She’s shut herself away in the Leaky Cauldron, and you don’t want to know what I had to do to Hannah Abbott to get her to tell me that”

“You should tell witch weekly” Draco mused.

“Are you going to do something?” Neville was starting to get emotional; it actually hurt Draco’s heart to see the other wizard’s nostrils flaring with distress. He’d gotten so used to his smile.

“Do you need an escort just to find your way outside of hogwarts?” He asked cruelly.

“Vy has been sending Hermione food, because for some reason his is the only owl Crookshanks doesn’t attack.”

“Tell him to stop lurking” He felt very unreasonable because everything was very unreasonable; it was very unreasonable that he was having this discussion with Neville Longbottom on his doorstep rather than lounging in a bath somewhere feeding Hermione grapes.

“Tell him yourself” Neville said tearfully “But he remembers you from school and he thinks you’re an asshole, and I’m not totally sure he’s not right!”

Draco groaned, and then seized Neville roughly, dragging him into his arms.

“Stop crying, Longbottom” He buried his face in Neville’s shoulder “And stop reading witch weekly. If you get any better at accessorising, they’ll put you on the cover”

It wasn’t difficult to slip away from the manor; it wasn’t as if there was anyone watching him. Pansy had moved in to one of the guest rooms once they’d overcome the hundreds of defensive wards around the place that would have eaten her, but she often had places to be. He knew the way to Diagon Ally because she’d taken him there to buy a new wand, and the other trappings of a respectable wizard; he liked the wand, because now that the trace was off him, he could practice all the immature, ridiculous magic he’d done at Hogwarts at home; he’d already turned Pansy’s shoes to crocodiles and made hundreds of paper butterflies to flutter around the orangery. He didn’t care for the shoes or robes, and mostly ignored them; except for the heavy, fur trimmed cloak, which he used to hide his face when he left the manor, and which he was wearing now.

How were you supposed to stalk someone when they wouldn’t leave their room? He didn’t even know which room Hermione was in, and he could learn nothing from the landlady, who set an enchanted broom on him when he asked. Hermione had left no special instruction regarding him; no exceptions to her plea for privacy. She knew perfectly well that he couldn’t write well enough to send her an owl, nor would he dictate to Pansy or a post-witch, and risk a love letter falling in to the hands of a gossip rag. It was thoughtless of her to leave him like this; he could have gotten the impression that she didn’t want him at all. And in her shame, she played right into the hands of the judgemental magical community.

He still had difficulty reading, but he read all the wizarding publications that speculated about he and Hermione; in the absence of real insight- because, of course, everyone involved in the ‘cover up’ was dead- there was just scandal. The lascivious descriptions of he and Hermione ‘caught in the act’ and speculation about a teacher’s attraction to someone ‘with the mind of either a fourteen-year-old, or a ferret’ were sickening; the fawning write-ups of his status as the last malfoy heir and the wizarding world’s hottest bachelor were somehow worse- one of the magazines suggested that his ‘ideal mate’ might do well to ‘line his burrow’ and bring him a dead rabbit, which was most annoying because he was worth at _least_ several dead rabbits.

He wasn’t sure that this would- or could- blow over before Hermione lost so much of herself that she would never recover. He could marry Pansy- she’d made it clear that was what she expected- and distract the wizarding world with the glamorous, meaningless nuptials, but he wasn’t sure if Hermione would understand, and, at the end of the day, he didn’t care for Pansy like he cared for Hermione. Her cleverness was cooler, more smug and self-satisfied. Hermione turned cleverness in to warmth and into funniness- at least when she wasn’t weaponising it against herself and all her perceived faults.

He revolted at the idea of sharing his feelings with the world; articulate, relatable feelings were new- he deserved them after going so long without. Would he really be forced to declare to the entire wizarding world how he felt about Hermione, just to put this sickening drama to bed? Just to convince Hermione herself?

It was all too awful to think about in wizarding-thought. If he didn’t come up with a plan soon, his beloved burrow pelt would rot into the walls of her burrow; and if that happened, he had no further desire to be a wizard at all.


	38. Stoat Of Arms

The Powerful Owl had brought her battered fish and chips, still warm, wrapped lovingly in newspaper. It was the haughtiest owl Hermione had ever met; she’d decided that this was because it was Australian, and thought itself better than the English owls. She tried to coax it to eat some of the chips, and it ignored her icily. Crookshanks watched it warily from under the dresser- he’d been swooped by a powerful owl when they’d visited Australia to look in on the Wilkens one Christmas; Hermione wasn’t terribly good at skulking around in bushes at night and she’d failed to account for wild owls.

She’d put on a little weight with the meals the owl brought; her head had stopped spinning, and she’d found enough energy to read through her hate mail. She avoided anything from friends; if they didn’t treat her harshly, they were disingenuous, and she couldn’t bear to be treated harshly by her friends. The strangers and the magazines agreed with her; she was a monster.

When she finished the fish, she was startled by a moving picture in the newspaper below; she didn’t know any fish and chip shop that wrapped with the Daily Prophet. There was Draco, staring, unsmiling, at the photographer. The full-colour spread was hardly required for him; he wore dazzlingly silver-white robes, and with his hair, skin, and eyes, there was little to contrast. He looked like a being wrought from precious metal.

The headline blared; “Man’s Greatest Treasure- Malfoy heir to donate half his fortune every day until Golden Girl Granger found and brought to his estate”. Hermione nearly choked on a chip, and hastily read on.

That evening, she stole out of the leaky cauldron with Crookshanks tucked under the cloak she’d transfigured out of a bedsheet. She wore a veiled hat underneath the hood; with any luck, anyone who saw her would assume she was a hag. The powerful owl travelled on her shoulder, glaring at passers-by. She didn’t know exactly where in Magical Britain the Malfoy Estate was; luckily her voice was so hoarse from disuse that, when she croaked it out as her destination for the Knight Bus, the conductor was too unnerved to question why she’d want to go there.

They dropped her as close as they could, which meant in the middle of bloody nowhere, but as soon as she stepped off the bus, the owl took off from her shoulder, and, swooping low and slow, started leading her along a tumbled sandstone wall. It was hard to imagine why the Malfoy estate would admit her like this; it was hard to imagine why the Malfoy estate would admit her at all, seeing as she wasn’t being escorted by a pureblood. She’d almost resigned herself to wandering the rambling rows and fields until the sun came up, when it seemed like very suddenly she was walking through the wild, untended splendour of a forgotten English formal garden.

What came to mind was a muggle children’s book, read in soft voice by her mother. There, in the darkness, was a double swing, the wood silvered by moonlight; a fountain, choked by vivid, overgrown lilies and teeming with fish and frogs; her path interrupted the nighttime business of a sleek young fox, and she just had to stop walking and throw back the hood and veil in wonder.

The owl landed nearby on a stone bench hidden by an overgrown trellis of ivy. Malfoy reached out to it and stroked the dappled feathers of it’s back, little more in the darkness than a suggestion of some feral beast in repose. He could have been anywhere; he particularly, at this time of the morning, could have been in bed. Somehow, she was less than surprised to find him here.

“Malfoy” she whispered “I... I don’t know what you want”

He leapt to his feet, took her shoulders in his hands.

“You silly witch” he growled, and kissed her as if he was possessed by the darkness itself.

“Well, that was a week ago, so there’s just a small chance you’ll have to work for a living” Pansy said briskly.

Hermione wasn’t quite sure how she’d ended up curled against Draco’s chest in the tumble-down, wild tower of the manor, almost too happy to breathe, both of them naked, and somehow Pansy Parkinson was there; it wasn’t how she’d imagined the morning after finding him in the garden.

“That’s what I have females for” Draco said lazily, squeezing Hermione a little.

“We’d probably make a fortune just off of all the feral peacocks” Pansy said thoughtfully, poking the powerful owl, which had settled on the curtain-rail of the four-poster, and, if it turned out later that it was a transfigured wizard, Hermione was quietly confidant that it had learnt a thing or two from watching them last night.

“You do not have females plural” Hermione realised suddenly.

“I don’t have anything except a roofless mansion and, apparently, rather a lot of peacocks” Draco said smugly.

“All I’m saying is, I’m glad the Golden Girl turned up before you started hocking your ass” Pansy said pertly, and Hermione had to laugh.

“As is, you might have to leave the lavish wedding off the table for twenty years or so. Maybe write a book. Or a couple books. Bestsellers. You’re still a swot, right Granger?”

“You really gave away all your money?” Hermione whispered to Draco.

“It was that, or get beaten to death by a broom” Malfoy agreed obtusely “The only thing that made me interesting to those hounds was my money- since they aren’t allowed to talk about blood purity anymore, at least- and now the money’s gone and no one cares if you molested me”

She swatted him gently on the chest, and then tenderly kissed the place she’d hit, overcome by a sort of madness for him that knew no shame or doubt.

“I‘ll take this owl back to Hogwarts, I’ve got some business there later” Pansy said cheerfully “You can have your guest wing back, too. Although I don’t know anyone who’d want it; what a mess this place is!” She nudged her elegantly gauntleted wrist into the owl until it reluctantly stepped off the bedpost; then she flounced out.

“That isn’t your owl?” Hermione said in surprise; but Draco had other things on his mind besides the owl; she suddenly had it in her head to hope that the powerful owl would be back later with food; it didn’t seem as if she’d be leaving the bed for a while.

“Wait” she pushed ineffectually at him with both hands, unable to shift him even a little.

“I’ve got your wand” he purred “Tell me what you’re going to do with it”

“Just a second- where did you donate all that money?” Hermione said, taking her wand from his roaming hand.

“The NFWS” he said absently.

“The what?” Hermione had never heard of a magical organisation by that name.

“The National Ferret Welfare Society” Draco grinned, and that was that.


	39. Great Minds Mink Alike

_They’d both had their youth stolen from them, really; now, though they were almost thirty, they indulged in any silliness that took their fancy. They rambled around the old house in its tumbledown glory, lived in the garden almost as much as the house; Draco fed Hermione fruit straight from the hedgerows, and made her rosehip tea in the mornings. They invited their friends and lovers to play wild games of hide and seek and picnic in the overgrown garden. It was impossible to feel any jealousy over the little that they had; somehow laughter and love ended up filling all the awkward, injured places where their hurts abraded each other. The wizarding papers, which they only ever read on fridays, when the powerful owl brought them wrapped, oil-stained and warm, around fish and chips, never got over calling them “Mr and Minx Malfoy”; which was okay, because the attempted insult never stopped being funny._

_When they discovered a few nervous house elves who’d remained even after the ties that held them to the house broke, they helped turn the habitable east wing of the manor into a house elf commune, where free elves from all over Britain gathered to share culture, petition the reformation committees established after the war for increased wages and rights, and raise their families. Within a year, Draco formally signed the estate over to them, with barely a blink; they brought in one magical creature after another, making them respectful, comfortable sanctuaries, forming one committee after another, never losing steam; eventually there was discussion of establishing a Ministry of Magical Creatures to liaise with the wizarding community and challenge their condescending and exploitative laws on magical creature protection and control; it would be the first of its kind in the world, and the former Malfoy estate would be the headquarters._

_The not-yet-ministry hired Draco and Hermione as caretakers and ambassadors. Since Crookshanks had passed quietly away (in his favourite spot, by the crumbling fireplace where they cooked kippers for his breakfast) they’d considered travelling; just backpacking around Europe, since they didn’t have the money to make it to Australia, but Draco had been making jokes about not having enough scent-glands to drag all of Europe, and Hermione knew he only spoke ferret when he was nervous; besides, she was almost finished the first draft of her book. She didn’t let him so much as glimpse it until she was ready; luckily he couldn’t resent her secretive piles of parchment and quills, as long as they pleased her._

_Draco had expected a weighty memoir, or a political history of the exploitation of magical creatures in Britain, or something else; he was surprised to finally hold the wizarding children’s book she had slowly, hesitantly, lovingly illustrated herself._

_The story was very simple; a beautiful orange cat went on adventures and made friends with one magical creature after the other, and brought them home to his witch; she learnt a little about each of their lives, their favourite foods, and their dreams. The last creature he brought home was what seemed like a perfectly ordinary ferret;_

_But things aren’t always what they seem._


	40. The End

Thank You so much for reading <3


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